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
were on the road to cultural extinction... He had to produce a commodity which was valuable enough to earn him some protection". 4 The goods bought at the trading post have no value for Arietta. The beads are ugly and large and not elaborate. They were made in Japan, a country with an ancient culture that has different standards than the Eurocentric value system, but it has also been oppressed and exploited by the adulation of the dollar. For the girl the disproportionate arrangement of the beads expesses the disruption of the inherent relationship between nature and man; animal and the Indian hunter. The differences between Mr. and Mrs. Rapier's and Arietta's perspectives are compelling in their dialogs, questions and responses. The whole situation is two sweet for Arietta; like syrupy soda. On the way home she begins to feel sick and asks Mr. Rapier to stop. He responds by turning the air-conditioning on, so he interpreted Arietta's request in his own way. He does something but not the thing Arietta wants him to do. In the car Mrs. Rapier says to Arietta: "You've just worn yourself out from the heat and playing Indian". 5 This sentence can have two interpretations at least. Perhaps she knows that the whole situation that is set up by her and her husband is a fake game, and it proves how cruel they are because they force the girl into this situation. The second possibility is that living and acting like an Indian is only a game or a play; it is like a show in a circus, and this view expresses Mrs. Rapier's feeling of superiority over the way Indians act. At the end of the short story Riley extends her scope of observation as she mentions a little black girl who was involved in almost the same situation. In a Safari Park the Rapiers took a picture of her dressed up in African clothes, or what they thought was African clothing. The girl was standing next to a papier-máché lion. The Rapier's could understand neither the African girl's nor the Indian girl's culture. 4 Jane Tompkins, " 'Indians': Textualism, Morality, and the Problem of History," in "Race, " Writing ; and Difference, ed. Henry L. Gates (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 67. 5 Patricia Riley, "Adventures of an Indian Princess," in Earth Song, Sky Spirit, ed. Clifford E. Trafzer (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1992), p. 140. 21
