Black Elk Speaks and Angels In America: Continuous Conflict and Prejudicial Treatment Occurring to Members Within a Society
The books Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt, and Angels In America by Tony Kushner are two similar readings both involving continuous conflict and prejudicial treatment occurring to members within a society. Though the protagonists in both books feel a profound sense of responsibility, they are dealing with something they are attempting to overcome, and are running away from death. Their reasons for acting out as well as their attitudes towards their outcomes differ greatly. Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux medicine man, wanted nothing more than the Lakota people to live in peace and harmony and practice their beliefs free of conflict and outside interference. Prior Walter, suffering with Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDs), is struggling with the idea of betrayal and finding purpose in his life and a reason to survive. While both authors write in the form of a transcription of personal conversations, illustrate a similar setting that both main characters experience, and follow the conventions of the cultural difference narrative, Kuchner’s story adheres more closely to these conventions by allowing its central protagonist Prior to mature, evolve, and overcome. In contrast, modest Black Elk feels he cannot fulfill his duties to the Great Spirit. Yet the two do have one core issue in common: being looked down upon in the government and society. This essay will explore the idea of repression and present the production of division in society, community destruction and rebuilding, the effect of supernatural fantastical elements, the theme of desire, and death.
The narrative Black Elk Speaks is centered around the Oglala Lakota Native American people, an indigenous group in the western part of the United States. Throughout the book, Black Elk and his people are faced with persecution by white Americans, “superior” to the tribe, whose goal was to wipe out their entire civilization. The Lakota people followed a strict code of conduct and had an outlook on life and freedom that differed greatly from white people in the United States. White Americans want the land because they believe there is gold in the Black Hills. Additionally, the government look at Native Americans like they are a threat to society and controlled where they live and camped. White Americans monitored them and did not feel like the Oglala Lakota people were improving the land or using it correctly and efficiently. Unfortunately, the Lakota people are looked down upon as a threat, especially while the ghost dance was skyrocketing. The ghost dance, a dance where both men and women hold hands and sing circling a tree painted red in the center in hopes to see and speak with dead relatives, brought about this wonderful utopia. The ghost dance gained power and momentum and began taking place all over the country. White people began to develop negative feelings of growing fear and anger because the Lakotas were dancing to wipe them out. They were not granted the rights of citizens because they were not looked at as citizens but as enemies. Black Elk does what he can to restore their faith. Todorov’s idea of self and others comes into play during this time. Todorov discusses how if people can’t relate to a group and recognize similarities, they must either control or destroy it. In this case, the Oglala Lakota Native Americans are indigenous and therefore looked down upon as inferior and are identified as the “other”. Unfortunately in today’s society and even more in earlier times, Native Americans and gay people, with and without AIDs, are marked as different and are viewed as inferior. In the book Angels In America, Roy Cohn has a difficult time accepting that he is a homosexual to both himself and others. Roy does not want to be marked as gay because being gay seemed like a problem to him. “Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows. Who have zero clout. Does this sound like me, Henry?... Roy Cohn is not a homosexual. Roy Cohn is a heterosexual man, Henry, who fucks around with guy”. Roy associates being gay with having less power and equates being gay with being less of a person. This book takes place in the 1980s when many homosexuals were facing irrational hatred, intolerance, and fear. At the beginning of the HIV epidemic, people frequently pointed the finger at homosexuals, bisexuals, or just men who had sex with other men. They were constantly blamed responsible for the transmission of HIV. Belize, being a black homosexual, deals with a lot of prejudice and hate. Roy Cohn came at his nurse throughout the narrative calling him “a Butterfinger spook faggot nurse” and other discriminating names. Belize strongly feels, “The white cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word “free” to a note so high nobody could reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on earth sounds like freedom to me”. Belize believes the United States needs to do a lot of evolving.
The theme of desire is present in both narratives being discussed. Black Elk seeks to live in a time where there are no hatred, racism, discrimination, and wars. He talks about how all people are somehow tied together when he says, “The sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle”. Disastrously, throughout the narrative, Black Elk tells the stories of the many bloody conflicts between the Native American Indians, and the white soldiers of the United States Army. The Years prior, Red Cloud, the Lakota Oglala chief, signed a treaty with the white soldiers promising 'our country would be ours as long as grass should grow and water flow”. It was their country according to the Wasichu treaty with Red Cloud that was made 8 years before, but as shown in the book, the agreement was ineffective and the Wasichus did not follow through with the terms. Black Elk and his people were faced with extreme tension when the whites began creeping in that gradually turned to violence. Wherever they went, the white soldiers followed them coming to kill them. Black Elk felt he was put on Earth to save his people and wanted nothing more than for his people to be safe and able to continue their practice. Black Elk talks about his visions where his grandfathers express their desire for everyone to be happy with the green earth and each other. Similar to the Lakotas, desire is a theme that pops up a lot in Angels In America. Years ago when homosexuality was not socially accepted many men and women felt they needed to stay closeted. Roy Cohn, a famous lawyer in New York, is one who denies his sexuality till his death. Roy Cohn defiantly refuses to admit he has AIDs to everyone, including his doctor Henry, but instead tells people he is sick with liver cancer. Roy values power over everything and believes gay people have no power. Roy feels if he was open about his sexuality he would lose the power and clout he worked hard to achieve. In contrast to Roy, Joe, a Mormon who starts out as a deeply closeted homosexual unhappily married to Harper, realizes he can no longer hide the way he feels for men. Joe eventually grows the courage to tell his strictly conservative mother he is gay and leave his wife, whom he does not love, for Louis. Louis ends up turning on Joe because he’s a conservative Mormon that supports Roy Cohn, but Joe still desires being with him throughout the narrative. Harper, desiring nothing more than to be loved, felt trapped in her failing marriage until she finally works up the confidence to be independent and deny Joe’s return. Prior and Louis are both openly gay, but Louis becomes more closeted and ashamed to be gay around his orthodox Jewish family. Prior’s best friend and Roy’s nurse at the hospital, Belize, is an influential black homosexual that feels confident to be exactly who he is in every aspect: the way he dresses, defends himself and speaks up to voice his opinions. Belize fully owns being a black homosexual and has this sense of pride; he desires being authentically himself.
Both Angels In America and Black Elk Speaks incorporate much about the idea of death and destruction in their societies. Angels In America opens up to the funeral of Sarah Ironson, Louis’s grandmother, at an orthodox synagogue. That same day, Louis discovers that his lover Prior has been diagnosed with AIDs and will go through slow and painfully gruesome suffering before he dies. Louis could not handle staying romantically with and eventually losing someone with AIDs. Throughout the book, we see how the virus destroys many relations: Louis and Prior’s four and a half years of relationship together and Roy Cohn’s friendship and partnership with Joe. Belize’s already negative attitude towards Louis, due to Louis’ close-minded outlook on many controversial issues, turns to genuine hatred when he learns Louis left his best friend, Prior when he was sick and needed him the most. At the end of the book, Roy Cohn painfully dies in his hospital bed after screaming at the ghost of Ethel in the middle of the night. Throughout the reading, Prior hallucinates about his dead ancestors similarly to the “visions” Black Elk claims to have during his lifetime. Black Elk repeatedly hears voices and has clear, abstract visions of his grandfathers directing, defending, and warning him of what’s in store for him and his people. In Black Elk’s early boyhood, the Moon of the Popping Trees battle broke out and the Lakotas were successful in killing every Wasichu soldier. Wasichu soldiers swamped their old guns for new ones in The Attacking of the Wagons battle leaving dead horses and warriors piled up. Wasichus made a treaty with the people that said: “our country would be ours as long as grass should grow and water flow”. Conditions were not good for the Lakota people; they were hungry because they were only given a fraction (less than half) of the food the Wasichus promised in the Black Hills treaty. Due to the lack of food, many people were forced to eat their horses. The Wasichus gave them barely any cattle and took away about half the land they previously had. Additionally, everyone was severely sick and skinny killing several Lakota people. Lots of Lakota people vanished to get away from all the pity, despair, and suffering, including Black Elk who returns to find out his father, sister, and brother died leaving him with just his mother. Many bands were attacked and many of their own people, the Shoshones, Crows, Lakotas, and Shyelas, had turned against them, surrendered, and came to fight them with the Wasichus. On December 29, 1890, the Wounded Knee Massacre took place at the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation where hundreds of Lakotas, almost half being women and children, were slaughtered by white Americans. There were frozen dead and helplessly wounded bodies of men, women, and children scattered all over the Lakota reservation. The white soldiers then raided each and every teepee to rid the Lakota of their guns and weaponry, so that they were entirely powerless. A white officer found Yellow Bird’s gun. They wrestled with each other until the gun went off killing the officer. As soon as the gun went off an officer killed sick Bigfoot in his teepee and a scuffle began killing and injuring more Lakota men, women, and children. 100 warriors were way outnumbered and used their bare hands to find the soldiers and got back their guns. Yellow Bird killed many soldiers until he was shot down. The Lakota men wanted to keep fighting to finally get their revenge, but Red Cloud ordered them not to and said, “So we must make peace, and I will see that nobody is hurt by the soldiers”.
