Comparison & Contrast
Essay 2 Scott Momaday’s “The Way to Rainy Mountain” and Bobbie Ann Mason’s “Being
Country” are two the texts to be compared. Though they share similarities, they too are quite different. They both share similar topics, in that they are two stories of cultures, but written from different perspectives of their cultures. Momaday is from the Kiowas tribe of the plains of
Oklahoma, and Mason from a farm in Mayfield, Kentucky. Both exhibit some comparisons, but mostly contrasts throughout their writing. Momaday’s American Indian heritage dates back to the 1880’s when his grandmother was born, where Mason’s dairy farm heritage takes place starting when she was born in 1940. I found both to be stories of each of the author’s lives and a sort of survival the each had to endure. In “The Way to Rainy Mountain”, Scott Momaday tries to reunite himself with his Kiowa heritage by embarking on a journey to Rainy Mountain in Oklahoma to visit his grandmother’s grave. He begins his essay with a detailed and descriptive review of how
Rainy Mountain engages the reader. “Great green and yellow grasshoppers are everywhere in the tall grass, popping up like corn to sting the flesh…” (118) This sentence is a great example of his gifted ability to be descriptive. Momaday then paints the reader a history lesson when he mentions, “…the Kiowas were living the last great moment of their history. For more than a hundred years they had controlled the open range…In alliance with the Camanches, they had ruled the whole southern Plains” (119). Though Momaday’s grandmother, Aho, lived out her long life in the Rainy Mountains,
Momaday stated, “I want to see in the reality what she had seen more perfectly in the mind’s eye, and traveled fifteen hundred miles to begin my pilgrimage” (119). He is telling me that he is a proud American Indian and wants to try and keep some of his grandmothers life, heritage, and spirit alive in his mind. After Aho died,
Country” are two the texts to be compared. Though they share similarities, they too are quite different. They both share similar topics, in that they are two stories of cultures, but written from different perspectives of their cultures. Momaday is from the Kiowas tribe of the plains of
Oklahoma, and Mason from a farm in Mayfield, Kentucky. Both exhibit some comparisons, but mostly contrasts throughout their writing. Momaday’s American Indian heritage dates back to the 1880’s when his grandmother was born, where Mason’s dairy farm heritage takes place starting when she was born in 1940. I found both to be stories of each of the author’s lives and a sort of survival the each had to endure. In “The Way to Rainy Mountain”, Scott Momaday tries to reunite himself with his Kiowa heritage by embarking on a journey to Rainy Mountain in Oklahoma to visit his grandmother’s grave. He begins his essay with a detailed and descriptive review of how
Rainy Mountain engages the reader. “Great green and yellow grasshoppers are everywhere in the tall grass, popping up like corn to sting the flesh…” (118) This sentence is a great example of his gifted ability to be descriptive. Momaday then paints the reader a history lesson when he mentions, “…the Kiowas were living the last great moment of their history. For more than a hundred years they had controlled the open range…In alliance with the Camanches, they had ruled the whole southern Plains” (119). Though Momaday’s grandmother, Aho, lived out her long life in the Rainy Mountains,
Momaday stated, “I want to see in the reality what she had seen more perfectly in the mind’s eye, and traveled fifteen hundred miles to begin my pilgrimage” (119). He is telling me that he is a proud American Indian and wants to try and keep some of his grandmothers life, heritage, and spirit alive in his mind. After Aho died,