Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. [Vol. 5.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 25)

Studies - Robert Murray Davis: Multiple Voices in The Death of Bernadette Lefthand

dominant culture. And though she is aware of inter-tribal tensions and feelings of superiority, she does not share them. Grade is not exactly a traditional Indian. She watches game shows on a battered black-and-white television set, enjoys mass-produced junk food as much as she does a Hopi feast, and has only cursory knowledge of traditional Indian religion and none of the supposedly Indian identification with nature. She does note that "plastic bags have ruined the looks of the country" around Many Farms, but she also thinks the store from which they came "really nice" (82). White tourists endure heat and discomfort to enter Canyon de Chelly so they can "write their names everywhere and take souvenirs home with them even if they know they aren't supposed to" (83). For her, it is merely the place where Tom's and Anderson's grandparents live. She does know that she is an Indian, and she is matter-of-fact about rather than resigned to her lot. She points out that except for the local white people, "most everybody who lives around here is an Indian and real poor. One just naturally goes with the other, I guess" (46). She knows that whites, including Starr, look down on and discriminate against Indians, but, aware of the foolishness of white "Wannabees" and even less knowledgeable tourists, she does not accept the premise that they are superior. Nor does she let white attitudes spoil her pleasure at staying in a Gallup motel and eating at a Furr's Cafeteria, the high points of her sixteen years' experience. Grade is aware of and resigned to personal as well as social limits. Plainer than her accomplished sister, she accepts her subordinate role, proud of Bernadette's beauty and her dancing and pleased with her romance with Anderson, the handsomest male in the region even though she does not entirely reject her Taos father's stereotyping of his Navajo tribe. She accepts the responsibility of caring for her sister's orphaned son (the idea of marriage and motherhood as natural disasters provides a subtext of her narrative) at the expense of her own education and prospects and even her home, planning at the end of the novel to move to California so that the boy will not grow up surrounded by people who know his parents' fate. Gracie knows the circumstances of the characters' lives, but she does not have all the facts. She has heard that Emmett Take Horse is suspected of being a witch and believes in witches, though she doesn't 62