Heart Song Of Charging Elk
Charging Elk, ?Friend or Foe?
Culture is always important to groups and societies. Throughout Heartsong of Charging Elk, Welch emphasized the point about culture and assimilation and what life is like on the other side. People are very ethnocentric and feel only their ways are the right ways. This book showed Charging Elk as an outsider who learned to live in the new ways of this society even though that wasn?t part of who he was, but eventually made him who he is.
Culture and traditions are key in the heart and soul of Charging Elk. From the beginning of his journey in Marsielle, he was very content about finding is way home. He wanted to be reunited with his people and their way of life. He dealt with a lot of communication barriers in this foreign town. No one knew his language or who he was, nor did he know anything about theirs. I think that as much as he wanted to stay strong in his Indian attributes, he was forced to conform to this new society and the ways he was now trapped in. He was treated as nothing more than a savage or a foreigner. He wanted to be
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