Rayona's Story example essay topic

There are many themes throughout this book, but the major theme of this novel is the overcoming strength of mother-daughter-grandmother love and relationship. For Rayona it is, understanding her mother and her Aunt Ida. Understanding comes in knowing what Ida did for them all and how much she sacrificed. Another important theme is survival, not so much as a specific Indian group or tribe but as a community who will stick by each other when it becomes truly important to do so.

Rayona is seen as an outcast and thus must survive basically on her on. Rayona's story introduces herself as an outcast teen living in Seattle with her mother struggling to get by. Rayona once again, is depicted as an outcast when her mother abandons her. Left to live with her Aunt Ida she is forced into a group of kids who belittle her. This isolation that occurs is mostly based on Rayona's race. This Racism is what makes Rayona feel very inferior as well as insecure.

She doesn't feel comfortable in her surroundings because she is not comfortable with her appearance and her heritage. This is made evident in a comment made to Rayona by Father Tom on page fifty-five. Father Tom says to Rayona, "And you won't feel so alone, so out of place. They " ll be others in the community of that size who share your dual heritage". From this statement one can see that Rayona truly does feel very inferior and uncomfortable in her surroundings, and that the people around her, because of their racism and criticism of her, make her feel even worse. So, as one can see, because of Rayona's consent to let people make her feel inferior, she does.

Rayona is not really accepted until she receives a job that introduces her to two new women. The author's style is very personal and realistic. Michael Dorris's personal style makes the book easy to relate to and full of situations common to everyday life. Unlike the style, the mood of this book is different in each section of this book. Rayona's story is told with a touch of rebelliousness and self-protection. Christine's story is one of importance, of living on borrowed time and finding it necessary to accomplish something in the time remaining to her.

Once she moves in with Dayton, however, that urgency disappears. Ida's story is mysterious and free of guilt. The reader is never really sure if she will tell Rayona what really happened all those years ago. Ida's voice is a quiet power, like one who has finally decided to tell something that no one else has ever known, something that would have changed her life if she had told the secret at the time it happened. The use of symbolic figurative language throughout this book is consistent. One popular symbolical type of figurative language found in this book is the metaphorical symbol of braiding.

This symbolical metaphor both opens and ends this book. First starting off with Rayona's mom braiding her hair and ends with Aunt Ida braiding hair while a priest watches. This, while being a metaphor, is also a symbol of the American Indians tangled life of stereotypes, conflicts, and pains that they suffered on the reservations. Symbolism is also something that is used in the book. The majority of the symbolism found in the book interprets the title, "A Yellow Raft in Blue Water". The title can be interpreted into two different symbolic meanings, the first being a sense of belonging in nature, and the other security found in a raft.

On page fifty-eight of the book when the lake is first introduced, it is described as blue water in a bowl being held by mountains that reflect gray, with a wooden raft about fifty feet out, painted yellow. All of the colors found around the lake blend in but when an object is painted yellow it changes the entire belonging of an object, it stands out. All three of the main characters were like that raft; they all didn't completely fit in and if they did, they couldn't maintain their belonging. Rayona was half-Black and half-Indian in a land of all true Indians, as if it isn't hard enough growing up, she was constantly not good enough because she wasn't completely "one of them". Christine was the person who tried to love and belong, but wasn't completely content with the feeling, so she removed herself before she could fit in.

Aunt Ida was the teenage girl in town "who had an illegitimate child" and never got married, even after her second child was born. Ida never had the opportunity to belong after the birth of Christine. This book intertwined three generations of American Indian women who were faced with obstacles but in the end overcame them all. Michael Dorris depicts the hardships faced by American Indian women but at the same time shows their courage to overcome these hardships.