Genre
Autobiography
Setting and Context
Alaska
Narrator and Point of View
Velma Wallis is the first-person narrator.
Tone and Mood
Nostalgic, introspective, and dynamic.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Velma Wallis and her siblings are protagonists. Whites are the antagonists.
Major Conflict
Velma and her siblings' coming of age in the era of modernization portends their way of life as Natives in Alaska.
Climax
The epidemics that overwhelm and terminate the Native Indians.
Foreshadowing
N/A
Understatement
Arranged marriages discount the import of mutual love between the partners.
Favoring of men among the native tribes understates the import of the females.
Allusions
Historical allusions such as “John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr” and the Native’s rights. Wallis alludes to Shamanism as well.
Imagery
Gwich’in culture is thinned by the Whites’ culture and formal schooling.
Fort Yukon is an archetypal New World with natural resources that sustain the Native communities.
Drunkenness is a macro-problem among Alaska’s Native Indians.
Paradox
The phrase "dirty Indian," which is racist, is paradoxical considering that Whites brought in infirmities that terrorized the Native communities. Yet, whites are not labeled as ‘dirty.’
Parallelism
N/A
Metonymy and Synecdoche
‘The church’ signifies Christianity.
‘Santa’ is connected to Christmas.
Personification
Owls are personified: they converse with people.
The tree in chapter ten is a personification of life.
