Multicultural Book Review: Native American Indian

Genre:  Fiction

Culture:  Native American

Book:  Bruchac, Joseph.  (2001).  Skeleton Man.  New York:  HarperCollins.

Synopsis:  Molly’s parents disappear one night and a man claiming to be her great-uncle shows up to take custody of her.  He is tall, elderly, thin, and dressed in all gray, and reminds her of the skeleton man in the story her parents told her as a child.  Molly’s father grew up on a Mohawk Reserve, and told her many Mohawk stories, including The Skeleton Man, about an uncle who tried to eat his whole family (in the story, a rabbit saves the niece from being eaten, and shows her how to bring her family back to life).  Molly never believes her parents are gone forever, because she relies on her dreams to reveal important events to her, and she hasn’t had a dream that her parents are not coming back.  Molly, whose attempts fail to convince the social workers that she doesn’t have an uncle, goes to live with this “uncle” and becomes more and more uncomfortable in his house.  For instance, after she eats the dinner he gives her the first night, she doesn’t feel well, and passes out in her bed.  From then on, she begins hiding the meals he leaves for her and later dumping them in a drainage ditch.  Additionally, there are bars on her bedroom window, and each night she hears her uncle creep up the stairs and lock her bedroom door with a key from the outside.  When she finally confesses this to her teacher at school, and the guidance counselor becomes involved, they call her uncle and tell him they are coming to speak with him about it.  When they all arrive at the house, the uncle shows them upstairs and they see that the bedroom door is only lockable from the inside of the room—Molly’s side.  As soon as they leave, the uncle tells Molly that her dinner is on the table, and as she sits down, she hears him upstairs at her bedroom door and hears an electric screwdriver as he begins to reverse the lock back to the way it was originally.  The creepy uncle spends all of his time in his tool shed in the backyard, and he never eats with Molly.  As a matter of fact, he hasn’t really let Molly see his face since she came to live with him, preferring to stay in the shadows of the house.  When he has had to meet with other people, he’s seemed to change, or take on a more normal appearance.  After Molly discovers something appalling in his study, and then something even more shocking in his tool shed, the action rises to a confrontational climax in the dark woods.

Comparisons/contrasts with traditional American/Western culture:  Locke (p.65), states, “[Native American Indians] pass on traditions and customs through oral myths and legends.  They live in the present, rather than in the past or future.”  This was true in the book, as Molly’s parents passed on myths and legends orally through the bedtime stories they told her.  Throughout the book, Molly also never dwelled on the past or the future.  She was wholly secure in the abilities of her dreams to reveal to her what she needed to know, and she was courageous in acting on them.  She was steadfast and brave in surviving the present in her “uncle’s” house.  Locke writes (p.67), “Prejudice is also frequently encountered in the educational system…studies have shown the discouraging trend that prejudice toward Native American Indians is staying the same or even increasing (Beuf, 1977).”  This was evident in the book in the way adults treated and reacted to Molly.  The school guidance counselor, the social worker, and all adults except her classroom teacher, treated Molly with disregard and impatience, using “the tone that certain grown-ups use with children and idiots—who are the same in their minds” (Bruchac 14).  Lastly, Locke writes of Native American Indians: “they worship the forces of nature, such as the sun, wind, water, fire, thunder, and lightning, as well as animals” (Locke 70).  Rabbits, nature, and the spirit all play a large role in the plot of this book.

Response:  The Skeleton Man was an enjoyable, fast page-turner.  From the first page, it grabs the readers and makes them want to know what Molly’s situation was, and what she was going to do to get out of it.  I wanted to find out what had happened to her parents, who the Skeleton Man was, and what he wanted.  Bruchac painted a believable story while maintaining accurate cultural values, and weaving Native American Indian myth into a modern plot and setting.