Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1993. [Vol. 1.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 21)

STUDIES - László Dányi: Belonging and Perspective: An Interpretation of Two Native American Short Stories

In Kimberley M. Blaeser's short story the author remembers her stay in Paris, as well as her childhood. In France she saw a celebration and the first day she could not understand anything. She says about it "... I never forgot that first night, when the whole world was happening without me."

6 She was there but she did not belong to that place. The next day she went back to the carnival with friends and she enjoyed it. In Paris the loss of belonging to a place was temporary, but she realizes the significance of the situation. "And yet I feel these scenes add up to something, some meaning or lesson about all life and I try to put it into words for myself but I can't."

7 Later on this feeling deepens. The various stages of this process are described in the short story and these phases show how her perspective changes. Starting from the Paris experience there are further shifts between Paris and urban America. The sudden switches express how her mind becomes more and more obsessed with the idea of finding a place where she belongs. In Martin Heidegger's concept every human being is preoccupied with finding some way in which he can feel "Dasein", literally the sense of "being there".

8 The author of this short story seeks this attachment as well. The place where she is from is not the same as it used to be. She recollects images of the past and she relies on dream states as an escape from reality. But the dreams do not bring peace and relief. She cannot find her place in her dreams which gradually become nightmarish. She remembers the way they lived and the animals they watched. Her past haunts her: "I feel my past alive on the other side of the screen, hiding in the shadows of the bushes, about to jump out. With that hope or expectation pressing against all my organs, pressing against my very skin, I reenter the present night." 9 She has to face the present. The present is frustrating. A gambling hall is opened where everything and everybody work like a mechanism. The hall is the place where 6 Kimberly M. Blaeser, "From Aboard the Night Train," in Earth Song, Sky Spirit, ed. Clifford E. Trafeer (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1992), p. 26. 7 Ibid., p. 26. 8 See R. May, et al., Existence

—A New Dimension in Psychiatry, (New York, 1958). 9 Blaeser, op. cit., p. 29. 22