Zitkala-Sa

In School Days of an Indian Girl, one of the passages from Zitkala-Sa, readers are shown the changes she went through as a young girl moving to a new missionary school. One of the many themes repeated throughout this passage is her disconnect to the new culture and religion of white people. This theme is on clear display in “The Land of Red Apples” as she first arrives to the new school. She begins to show the jarring adjustment she has to go through as she observes the differences between her culture and the missionary’s.

On their journey to the new school she already calls everyone else “paleface” and feels “embarrassed” as they stare at her. One of the biggest moments showing the culture clash is when she notices a telegraph pole. Rather than seeing it as an inanimate object she views it as a living thing made from a tree and would often “hold (her) ear against the pole, hearing its low moaning.” A smaller moment later occurs when they arrive at the school and in a moment of fear and shyness “a rosy-cheeked paleface woman”tosses her up in the air, trying to comfort her. While it was an attempt to help Zitkala-Sa all she can thing is how her own “mother had never made a plaything out of her.” This memory of her mother causes her cry and her tears are misinterpreted by the “palefaces” for hunger.

While many readers today might not relate to some of the darker and more serious events of this story such as the death of a friend and mistreatment in school, these small moments that Zitkala-Sa write about feel very relatable to anyone who has had to go to a new school. What’s interesting is how readers can relate to that emotion, but the Zitkala-Sa goes a step further in adding culture and religious differences, causing a communication breakdown.

57 thoughts on “Zitkala-Sa”

  1. Jeremy – You’re right in showing that some of the misunderstandings were relatively innocent – the white people not understanding her, and not intentionally trying to strip her of home and comfort. In other places, she makes it clear that prejudice is part of the cultural assimilation practices, but in some places, as you notice, she cites experiences that lots of people might have had in changing circumstances or environments.

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  2. In this moving account, Zitkala-Sa describes the alienation and loneliness she felt when she moved from her reservation to a boarding school in South Dakota, where Native American children were sent to assimilate into white culture and they can check this https://uk.bestessays.com/ site to improve their writing skills extraordinarily. She was forced to leave behind everything that made her an Indian: language, customs and traditions – even her name.

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