SOURCE: Schweninger, Lee. “An Analysis of House Made of Dawn, by N. Scott Momaday.” In Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 160, edited by Tom Burns and Jeffrey W. Hunter. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group, 2002.

In the following essay, Schweninger examines House Made of Dawn on a number of levels, assessing the plot, characters, evolution of the work, the novel's historical significance, and how the work has been studied since its publication.

House Made of Dawn consists of a prologue and four major sections: “The Longhair,” “The Priest of the Sun,” “The Night Chanter,” and “The Dawn Runner.” The present action of these sections is set mainly in two distinct time periods. The first section takes place at Walatowa (Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico) between 20 July and 2 August 1945. The next two sections take place in Los Angeles in January and February of 1952. In the final section the action returns to Walatowa...