The Works of the Mind April 8, 2011

I Hear:

As Momaday begins his autobiography one can see a great difference in how he presents his life story. From the very beginning it seems as if he is focusing on others that were in his life and not himself at all. When Momaday describes his autobiography he says

“In general my narrative is an autobiographical account. Specifically it is an act of the imagination” (Momday).

As I began to read on in the autobiography I was able to repeatedly see this style of writing.

I Notice:

The first time I noticed his imagination came when he wrote

“Some of my mother’s memories have become my own. This is the real burden of the blood; this is immortality. I remember my mother was very young, four or five years old” (Momaday 22).

What sticks out to me in this particular moment is his use of words. In the being he states that some of his mother’s memories have became my own. From this statement it can be inferred that a story has been told to him (most likely from his mother) many times, fusing it into his memory, making it immortal. The thing I find interesting his how he says “I remember” almost as if this memory happened right in front of, when we know this cannot be true, due to his mother being four years old at the time. But instead of saying my mother told me or I remember this story my mother told me he says “ I remember”. After reading this statement it immediately drew me back to the words from the being, “imagination”.

In most cases the word imagination is not used in the genre of autobiographies; words like fact and truth are typically used. I find this interesting because when you think back on your life it is almost impossible to remember everything you have done. Things are forgotten or you beginning to say you did things when in reality you never did. You are not lying it is just a flaw in the human memory.

To me it seems like Momaday recognizes this flaw and uses it in his own autobiography. Reporting things as if they are facts, like in the example with his four year old mother. Later  on in the novel Momaday sums up this style of writing beautifully saying

“They are not stories in that sense, but they are story like, mythic, never evolved but evolving ever. There are such things in the world: it is in their nature to be believed; it is not necessarily in them to be understood….If I were to remember other things, I should be someone else” (Momday 63).

Although this book seems strange in what is being told to use, this is how made Momaday who he is. It does not matter if it is made up in some way; the only thing that matters is how he remembers them.

I Wonder:

Was Momaday, in some way, trying to prove a point with this type of writing? What inspired him to stray away from the normal, factual way of writing? Why did he include photography? (Photography is so concrete it is no form of imagination, but it seems that his writing is forced a great deal on how the mind stores memory) Are the notes at the bottom of the photos (The one of his mother, saying she looked Asian or Russian) trying to bring out his imaginative thoughts?

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