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Flashbacks
Section 2
Explanation and Analysis—Tayo and Emo:
Tayo and Emo have opposing relationships with violence in the novel: Tayo is a pacifist at heart who does not believe in repaying violence with further violence. Emo, on the other hand, advocates for retaliation, earnestly believing that Laguna Pueblo men should "take" White women as payback for the various atrocities White people have committed against Native Americans. Emo also takes pride in the acts of wartime violence he committed against Japanese soldiers, reveling in the trophies he took from their dead bodies. Note the following excerpt towar Section 2, where Tayo considers Emo's violent worldview:
“I only went after the officers. These teeth, they were from a Jap colonel. Yeah.”
Tayo could hear it in his voice when he talked about the killing—how Emo grew from each killing. Emo fed off each man he killed, and the higher the rank of the dead man, the higher it made Emo.
Tayo disagrees with Emo vehemently, disgusted that he could treat human life (or any part of the interconnected world) with such cruelty and indifference. Tayo assesses the origin point of Emo's cruelty in the above paragraph: ego and revenge. Both Emo and Tayo have been treated as inferior to White people their entire lives. Emo, humiliated and angered, seeks the power to do to others what has been done to him. Where Emo and Tayo differ, as foils, is in their approach to cyclical violence: Tayo seeks to end cyclical violence, refusing to hurt Emo even when the other veteran slanders him and tortures Harley. Emo, on the other hand, perpetuates cyclical violence, seeking to harm others as a form of revenge for the oppression he has experienced as an Indian American.
Related Themes:
