SOURCE: "Vision and Form in N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn," in Indian Journal of American Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1, January, 1982, pp. 69-79.

In the following essay, Sharma explores Momaday's focus on spirituality and depiction of the Native vision of the world in House Made of Dawn.

Though initially received with cautious condescension, N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn has now come to be regarded as a major statement by a major American Indian writer. Confused by the novel's "rapidly shifting and sometimes ambiguous chronological frame of reference," earlier reviewers and critics found the novel nothing but "an interesting variation of the old alienation theme"; "a social statement rather than … a substantial artistic achievement"; "a memorable failure," "a reflection, not a novel in the comprehensive sense of the word" with "awkward dialogue and affected description"; "a batch of dazzling fragments" which made one critic "itch for a...