46 pages • 1 hour read
Linda HoganPower: A Novel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Indigenous Knowledge Versus Western Scientific Knowledge
Content warning: This section of the guide discusses domestic violence and sexual assault.
One key power struggle negotiated by Omishto in the novel is between Western academic principles and tribal knowledge. Initially, Omishto seeks to empower herself by being “good” at Western educational processes and ways of thinking. She rejects superstitions and magical occurrences, denies Ama’s beliefs in cosmic balance, and has disconnected from her subconscious so much that she has stopped dreaming. Her grades give her status amongst her peers, as she is seen as a success story for assimilation: a “new and shining model for the Indian kids who always seemed indifferent to their school” (108).
Witnessing Ama’s choice to act according to her beliefs emboldens Omishto to disrupt the colonialist doctrines that privilege Western ways of knowing. The irony of her success at school is that she uses her critical thinking skills to turn the power dynamic on its head. She applies her knowledge of geography to her mother’s Christian doctrine, calculating the impossibility of the existence of heaven and hell as physical realms on earth. When her classmates harass her for her part in the panther killing, she criticizes the hypocrisy of their judgment, rationalizing that they only care for the idea of the panther but not the animal itself. She analyzes her white friend Jewel’s rejection of her, realizing that they had always existed in separate spheres of privilege. Though she was jealous of Jewel in the past, in the moment of their parting she feels righteous in comparison: “Suddenly she seems so young, younger than me, hugging her books to her chest. And I say to myself, I am not a child. I am not a white person. I am not the one who was wrong” (108). Jewel clutches onto “books” while Omishto rejects the schooling that discourages Indigenous or independent thought and privileges text-based knowledge.
Omishto’s new perspective continues to develop throughout the two trials, during which she weighs ways of knowing within disparate systems of justice. Omishto views the Western courtroom as dishonest and hypocritical, which is emphasized through the motif of truth versus lies. She sees the court as “a place where words can lie” (120), where people “believe in secrets and twists of truth, but call for honesty” (136). She critiques the use of Western scientific facts to obfuscate the story rather than clarify, mocking a biologist’s expert witness testimony regarding the possible species of panther: “[H]e can’t say whether or not this panther might not have come from the union of a cougar or mountain lion […]. Who is to say?” (121). Furthermore, Omishto feels like it’s impossible for her to communicate honestly due to the Western value of scientific facts. Her repetition of “how can I say” reveals her struggle to share what is meaningful to her. In contrast, at the tribal court, she feels that her testimony has value, she can tell “the same story, but more true” (162). In this scene, she is no longer limited to a narrow knowledge system that de-emphasizes and de-legitimizes her understanding of Methuselah, dreams, and animal spirits.
Through Omishto’s insight, Linda Hogan interrogates the Western value of data over personal, spiritual experience. Omishto’s spiritual encounter is portrayed with more certainty than the courtroom testimonies, as she reaffirms the truth of her vision of the four tribal women on the road, emphasizing that “they were there with or without anyone’s belief, even my own” (128). Ultimately, Indigenous knowledge is portrayed as truer than text-based, hierarchical knowledge, disrupting the dominant narrative of the superiority of Western ways of knowing.
The Power of Nature over Human Industry
Another key power struggle that Hogan portrays in the novel is between humans and the natural world. Like many Indigenous texts of the period, nature is portrayed as the most powerful force in the novel, above human industry. The hurricane symbolizes the sheer force of nature, able to decimate human society, both modern and ancient. The storm topples the ancient tree Methuselah, a foreign tree planted by early Spanish invaders. Though the tree is not a native species, it holds significance to the Taiga tribe as a representation of history and longevity. Its uprooting by the storm foreshadows violent upheaval and social change that will affect both communities.
The novel highlights the powerlessness of people over the natural cycle of birth and death. This power is encapsulated through the personification of the wind, the Taiga god called “Oni,” which has “pushing hands” and “a body” (34). During the storm, the wind is compared to an angry warrior who battles with Omishto, beating her into the ground. It is merciless and undiscerning, as it also blows snakes into the trees, deer into the air, and Ama against the house; animals and humans alike are at the mercy of natural forces that control life and death.
Furthermore, Hogan presents human attempts to overcome nature as destructive yet futile. While she portrays the urbanization of the Florida Everglades as needlessly harmful and conveys Omishto’s grief for the shooting of drowning, starving deer who are the victims of dam management processes, she satirizes frivolous human activities, like ballet lessons. Omishto imagines her friend Jewel “wearing a pink leotard and shoes in the midst of this swampy mosquito-ridden land” (104), juxtaposing an overwhelmingly murky image of nature with a stylized image of Western culture. Anecdotes of human irrationality in dealing with nature’s power are scattered throughout the story. Omishto relays people’s “foolish” struggles to grow crops that are ill-suited to the humid climate, and her grandfather’s attempt to stop a heatwave by shooting the sun. Hogan suggests that, although people have urbanized the Floridian landscape, it is nature that shapes the physical world and the human lives within it.
In a story about the killing of an endangered animal, humans are not portrayed as the most powerful entity. This is another way in which this novel disrupts Westernized views of the relationship between humans and nature. While the panther’s sickly state is a product of the toxic byproducts of human agricultural practices, the novel does not simplify a view of human dominance but instead holds a light to the ecosystem’s complexities. Omishto concludes that Ama was both right and wrong in her killing of the panther. The panther itself is a complex and mysterious figure, both a symbol of a dying race and of spiritual rebirth. The novel displays nature to be powerful because it will endure longer than human history, as it cannot be formulated, controlled, or destroyed, but only changed.
Cultural Identity as a Balance of Assimilation and Preservation
Over the course of the novel, Omishto comes of age as she draws strength from nature and her tribal beliefs. Though she is still an adolescent at the story’s conclusion, she has matured into a woman with a strong sense of cultural identity as a Taiga tribe member. Her cycle of death and rebirth is complete: “In the mornings, I wake newly born, full of life, yet unable to tell what I hold as if my body is a sacred container of stories, of storms recalled, of the smooth teeth of animals and the words of ancestors” (230). However, to reach this sense of cultural identity, Omishto undergoes a series of difficult decisions about assimilation and preservation while caught between Western and Taiga cultures.
At the beginning of the novel, Omishto navigates between the two worlds of the colonizer and the colonized, between “dissolving” into Western culture and standing proudly with her fellow Taiga people. She feels both empowered and disempowered by her connections to the dominant culture. At school, she enjoys being seen as “obedient” and a “good student,” always turning in her assignments and adopting a scientific way of thinking about nature and history, yet she eventually comes to understand her schooling as oppressive. At home, she refuses to try on her Americanized sister Donna’s dresses and resents being made her plaything. She also lives in fear of being the object of her white stepfather Herman’s gaze; Hogan obliquely suggests that Herman fetishizes Omishto. Omishto believes that Donna is prettier than her, but he is only interested in Omishto. As the story progresses, Omishto negotiates the cultural divide, making more decisions about assimilation and preservation. Her increasing agency regarding these decisions in the rising action highlights the fact that her journey toward preserving her cultural identity involves surviving violence and unlearning dominant cultural ideals.
At the Taiga tribal hearing, Omishto is again caught between belonging and not belonging. The Taiga council do not stigmatize or exclude her, but she does not know them well, and they speak Taiga instead of English. Her closest connection to them is her relationship with Ama, who is not one of them because she has chosen to live apart from them. Even Ama herself sometimes seems mysterious to Omishto. However, when Omishto takes refuge at Ama’s house after the Taiga, she makes a series of difficult choices to cut her ties to the Western world, reaffirming her identity as Taiga. This choice is her unique path, as Omishto chooses not to assimilate to one culture and preserve the other, unlike Ama, who chose to live between both. Omishto’s experiences lead her to see the Western world as too painful to stay in: “I’ve lived in their world with order and cleanliness and many other instruments of despair […]. And now I want no share of it” (212). Power therefore suggests that processes of assimilation involve “despair” and violence while processes of preservation initiate empowerment.
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By Linda Hogan
