House Made of Dawn: Allegory 2 key examples

In the Bible, Cain tends crops while Abel tends sheep. God appreciates Abel's offerings more than Cain's. Jealous, Cain kills his brother. It is the first act of "fratricide," or the murder of one brother by another. God curses Cain, telling him that any land he tries to work will now be rendered infertile by Abel's spilled blood.

In House Made of Dawn, Abel is the murderer. By giving his protagonist the name of the original murder victim and then putting a knife in his hand, Momaday creates a puzzle for the reader. What does the imperfect allusion mean? Does Juan Reyes Fragua represent Cain, and is the novel simply a reversal of the traditional story? This explanation does not quite make sense, especially because Momaday tells the reader very little about Fragua's motivations. If anything, Fragua's albinism turns him into a red herring of a villain: Abel hates him for his Whiteness and the power it seems to give him, but Fragua only looks White. He was born on the reservation and is likely of mixed heritage, just like Abel.

Milly's account of her impoverished childhood helps the pieces fall into place. The "dry and brick red" soil her father was always trying to work hints at the red, blood-soaked soil Cain was left with after he killed his brother. Abel never has a direct interaction with Milly's father. However, as a White farmer trying to tame the land and growing to hate it, he represents the archetype of White colonial settlers who have treated native ecosystems and communities like enemy combatants. For centuries, White colonists have tried to stamp out American Indian communities that are more "favored" by the land because they understand how to work with it instead of against it. Abel may be a murderer, but White colonists are the people who first killed their "brothers" and are left with a landscape they do not know how to care for. In the allegory, they are the true Cain.

At the same time, the allegory revisits the questions of what it means to be a victim (like the biblical Abel) and what it means to be a perpetrator (like the the biblical Cain). At no point does the Abel of the novel die neatly like his namesake, transforming into an eternal victim. Nor is Milly's father directly violent to Abel. They both live through trauma, they both perpetrate harm, and they both carry the burden of guilt, conscious or unconscious. This Abel and this Cain represent the way modern American life goes on in the wake of the original colonial "fratricide." Contrary to the story White colonists tell, the American Indian "brother" survived the encounter. Abel's challenge, which he carries out imperfectly, is to bear the ongoing sting of betrayal from White "brothers" who do not even notice that he is still alive.

In this vision, Francisco finds a second, seemingly infinite wind and keeps running "beyond his pain." His faltering breath as he runs represents his mortality. On one level, it stands in for his actual dying gasps: his lungs are literally about to give out at long last. On another level, his bursting lungs represent the consequences of trying so hard his entire life to outrun the devastating impacts of colonization. He has been enduring abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy since he was a child. As an adult, he tries and fails again and again to keep his family members alive and well. Now, at the end of the race, he realizes that it may have been a mistake to run full-out from the beginning. Colonization has a head start and greater endurance than Francisco. Francisco will die trying to race it to the finish line.

Still, Francisco keeps running. Something happens: not only does he overcome his limitations, but also the "dark shape of the man running away in the swirling mist" changes. No longer an opponent Francisco desperately wants to beat, the man ahead becomes the thing that keeps him going. The man is something like a guiding light, but Momaday describes him instead as a "shadow" for Francisco to set his sights on. This shadow can be read as a metaphor for Abel, Francisco's grandson and familial "shadow." Abel's very existence defies colonial erasure of Indigenous people. He is something real for Francisco to run toward, instead of the dwindling possibility of a future beyond colonization.

Francisco's metaphorical run toward Abel helps him transcend the limitations of his mortal body. Even as his body is dying, his vision shows him running endlessly. This transcendence might at first seem to give the novel an ending steeped in Christianity. In this interpretation, Francisco would spend his afterlife running and feeling stronger than he did even in his prime. However, Abel's role in Francisco's transcendence gestures instead to American Indian ideas about circularity, renewal, and creation. After Francisco dies, Abel takes to running in his stead. Abel's lungs continue the race once Francisco's are exhausted. Abel runs over the horizon in his grandfather's footsteps. The implication is that maybe one day he will find himself running toward his own shadow, a grandson who will then follow in his footsteps to continue the never-ending race. Francisco's vision is thus an allegory for the ongoing survival and resistance of American Indian people. They keep going through their own belief in past and future generations, no matter how fruitless the race against colonization may seem to any one generation.