Re-Telling the History: Voices in Diane Glancy's Pushing the Bear

• Main Authors: Wu, Ruei-bin, 吳瑞斌
• Other Authors: Huang, Hsinya
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/gyst75

碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 英語學系 === 97 === The Trail of Tears in 1838 has been a significant historical event to the Cherokee people in North America. The trauma caused by the Removal still haunts Cherokee people and lingers in their collective memory today. Diane Glancy’s novel Pushing the Bear (1996) takes an unconventional narrative style to depict this historical event and thus opens to new perspective of interpretation. This thesis intends to read Pushing the Bear in Native American literary context and analyzes its contribution to the writing of the history of the Trail of Tears. By rendering affect and emotions to the voices of the fictional characters in Pushing the Bear, Glancy turns the history of the Trail of Tears from a monotonous official record into a multi-voiced oral history. This re-telling of history is on the one hand a testimony to the hardships and suffering on the trail, and a rejection of the containment and victimization of dominant historical discourse on the other. This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One introduces the historical background of Pushing the Bear, its literature review and problematic of this thesis. Chapter Two gives an in-depth analysis of the narrative of individual characters regarding the relationship between voice and storytelling in Pushing the Bear. The fragmented narratives reflect the fragmented experience of the Cherokee people on the Trail of Tears. Chapter Three focuses on the traumatic memory of the Cherokee people and the cause of it—the separation from their homeland. By examining the traumatized voices of those homeless and uprooted Cherokee, this chapter aims to delineate the tenacious bond between Native American identity and the land. Chapter Four discusses how Pushing the Bear as a Native American historical novel intervenes and negotiates with mainstream history and history-writing. With the healing power of the memory of their tribal culture, Pushing the Bear represents the history of the Trail of Tears as a history of Cherokee recovery and survival. Chapter Five is the conclusion.