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Blue Winds Dancing

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Blue Winds Dancing
"Blue Winds Dancing"� "Blue Winds Dancing"�, the story of a man's internal conflict is revealed by Tom Whiteclouds' telling of the young man's thoughts while he is at school, his observations during his trip home and his reaction to the people when he arrives home.

In the beginning of the story (paragraphs 1-10) the Indian compares the city to the reservation. He thinks of the city as a captive place, a place "where trees grow in rows and the palms stand stiffly by the road sides."� I think the author is using this to represent the order of city life, the example above is in comparison to the military. He thinks of the reservation as a place of freedom, where "when the winds come whispering through the forests, they carry a smell of rotting leaves,"� and the animals roam freely through the forest. In this the author is saying to me that the reservation is a place where there is freedom, the environment is not militant. He uses these phrases to compare the two, city versus the reservation, the city being captive and the reservation being free.

In paragraph 11 the Indian makes the decision to journey back to the reservation and does not care what others think of his leaving.

On the train ride the Indian was struggling to come to terms with who he really is. He wanted to be an Indian but he wondered had he become too much like the white man. He saw some Indian women selling pottery and this angered him. This to me was a sign that he was thinking like a white man. He seemed to be concerned about what people thought about the Indians. Perhaps he was embarrassed by what his people had to do to make a living. Is he white or is he Indian? On the railroad track he sees the deer and does not want to harm the deer, he reaches a realization that he is not like the white men. For he does not wish to harm the deer. When he reaches the reservation boundary and steps into the woods he feels a spiritual change, which he describes when he sees the blue winds dancing. The blue

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