House Made of Dawn Themes

House Made of Dawn follows Abel, a Native American man, as he returns home to be with his dying grandfather Francisco. Through the novel’s examination of its complex characters, House Made of Dawn examines notions of a Native American identity and explores various paths available to Indigenous people in midcentury America. The book suggests that living in one’s native land allows people to form meaningful connections with their homes that “alien and inferior” residents…

The Native American characters of House Made of Dawn show great respect for the natural world, and the narrator follows suit; the story dedicates entire pages to descriptions of nature and characters’ reactions to it. Francisco, one of the oldest point-of-view characters, has the strongest connection to nature. He communes with the crops he plants, hearing and understanding the whispers of his corn. One of his last memories as he dies is a lesson…

House Made of Dawn portrays many different modes of storytelling, switching between perspectives and narrative voices, as well as featuring lengthy segments in which characters tell stories to each other. The narrator acknowledges that the book itself is telling a story by opening and closing the novel with traditional Jemez words that mark the beginning and end of stories. This establishes the value of stories in House Made of Dawn and the Native American cultures…

Abel searches throughout the story for a sense of connection. As a child, he loses his father, mother, and brother in rapid succession. After a sexual experience as a young man, the woman he has sex with teasingly runs away from him, laughing at his attempts to “get her back.” He similarly fails to form a meaningful connection with Angela St. John even after they begin a sexual relationship, as she is put off by…