The Sacred and the Secular

It is not quite accurate to think of the protagonists as existing in a pure state in which their indigenous culture was all that they knew. Yet, in the case of Abel, there was a difference in his relationship to the world before he left home for the war and after his return.

For example, the incident with the eagles represents an encounter with spirit that seems to flow fairly naturally for Abel. He saw the eagles soaring and releasing the snake. He pondered that, told the leader of the Eagle Watchers Society, and became part of their ritual. There is no major conflict here, at least initially. At the same time, Abel felt shame and disgust after capturing the eagle, which does not seem to be the expected feeling (p. 25). So, there was already something working to separate him from his own cultu

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It represents one of the secular aspects of Western culture that is treated as if it is sacred, holy, and meaningful. The old symbols have been replaced by new ones, but they are conflated. There is no true sacred, nor true secular. Instead, there is a secularized sacred and a sacralized secular. This is not the same thing as the Indian culture, in either book, however. In those cultures, the sacred infused all of life and all of life was a relationship. In the newer culture, ordinary life was vitiated and made isolated. In the House Made of Dawn, Abel is only one character who is affected. Even though other characters stayed in the town while he went away, they were still affected by the changing culture. There are a number of other characters whose lives change over the course of the book. For example, Abel's grandfather is changed. After Abel kills the white man, his grandfather's story seemed to change also. For the first time, his grandfather did not go to the sacred dance. Instead, he waited in the field worried about Abelito. It seems as though from the first time that he saw Abelito after his return, he was aware that there was a problem. For him, the sacred seemed to lose energy. The grandfather no longer r
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1536
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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