The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge Characters & Character Analysis

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge Important People

Carlos Castaneda

The author of The Teachings of Don Juan is the protagonist of this autobiographical story. In the early 1960s, as part of his graduate fieldwork in anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, Castaneda makes several trips to the Southwest U.S. He collects information on medicinal plants used by the Indians. At a Greyhound bus stop, Castaneda meets a white-haired, taciturn old Yaqui Indian, said to be an expert in peyote. Castaneda pretends to be more knowledgeable than he is about medicinal plants to induce him to talk. The young scholar pays several visits to the shaman's home and is befriended; but his questions about peyote are evaded. Finally, after about a year, Matus tests Castaneda's willingness to complete an assigned task he does not understand, and then announces that he has chosen him for a "long and arduous" apprenticeship like the one he himself endured decades earlier.

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