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

LÁSZLÓ DÁNYI BELONGING AND PERSPECTIVE: AN INTERPRETATION OF TWO NATIVE AMERICAN SHORT STORIES A few years ago the 100th anniversary issue of National Geographic Magazine was published with a nice holographic cover showing a picture of the fragile Earth on the front and that of the growing world of McDonalds on the back. I read an article about Hungary in it, and I came across a picture in the top left corner of a page. The text below the picture reads as follows: "...Hungarian style, Nándor and Ilona Budai possess... attractive clothes

—even a Soviet-made car for picnics in the country (top left) The picture showed a middle-aged couple with two children. They were eating canned food and all around them

—even on the top of the car

—they had a lot of cartons of orange juice and apple drink. I thought that there was something disturbing about the article and the picture. I found the journalist's image about "Hungarian style" completely incongruent with my ideas. Likewise, this article brought to mind two questions of viewpoint and perspective: how do two different cultures see one another?, what is significant in another's culture? In order to answer these questions I chose two Native American writers whose short stories raised similar questions. The points of view in Kimberley M. Blaeser's "From Aboard the Night Train" and Patricia Riley's "Adventures of an Indian Princess" are different. 1 National Geographic Magazine, 174 (December 1988), pp. 928—929. 19