Nature, identity and Indian survival in Louis Owens' Wolfsong

Abstract

The thesis analyzes the novel WOLFSONG by Louis Owens with particular focus on how in the novel Native American versus Euro-American relationship with nature and environment are presented. Furthermore, the thesis examines how the novel makes use of different imagery and characterizations in order to challenge perceptions around the complexity of American Indian identity, particularly countering the Myth of the Vanishing Indian. Hence, the thesis also looks into how the novel, both through plot and imagery, assigns to its American Indian hero a promising destiny of survival and return, in contrast to how Indians have been portrayed in the American literary canon. Approaching it as a trickster narrative or discourse, the thesis looks at how the novel relates to Native American oral traditions such as storytelling and myths, and hence to which extent the novel challenges the reader's perception of its conclusion.