Power Struggles

As Thomson wonderfully stated below me, Almanac of the Dead is the epitome of a mosaic-novel. Take one piece out and the rest will still stand intact, and that piece will stand intact, but it will not be quite as well understood unless the two are combined once more. Thus, I took into account a particularly blaring similarity between each life detailed in Silko's novel: the extremely detailed, explicit sexuality. It would be easy and undoubtedly much more comfortable to claim that this novel would have been the same story line, share the same message, with or without this particular element, but it's presence is one of obvious significance.

Perhaps this oversexualized text serves to bring contrast the baseness and simplicity of human nature with the multiple and convoluted schemes that take place throughout the book. It seems as though Silko is commenting on the inability to escape the animalistic even when the action performed seems inseparable from the human-ness of it. This is especially obvious and pertinent in the explanation of the "The general's other theory... that man had learned the use of rape through the observation of the sexual behavior of stallions in the wild" (338). With the direct connection to animalistic tendencies, even when it seemed as though the methodology was complex and based on some sort of elevated human intellect.

If one considers this particular scene more closely in which Tacho and the general discuss blood and violence and the torture of prisoners, it is interesting to note the ways in which it serves to equalize characters. Mernardo is at once the odd one out because he "had never lifted a hand against anyone" (338). Thus, the Indian and the general who understand suffering through the eyes of the inflicter are elevated over Mernardo, whose naivette is twisted into a reproachable sort of ignorance.

More interesting yet is the existence of a sexually liberalized set of female characters. Silko's women remind me of modernist male characters in their emotional detachment from the physical act of sex. Despite their apparent agency, it becomes clear as one hops from character to character that although these women allow for sexual encounters, their consciousness exists on a plane much separated from their corporal forms. This is exhibited clearly in Zeta, Lecha, and Alegria's separate stories - at no time is sex enjoyable unless it is particularly initiated by the woman (in the case of Lecha and Root's relationship, for example). The descriptions could almost be likened to an uncomfortable visit to the dentist, or simply one more task in which the surrender of agency creates a position of power for these women in a round-about sort of way.

It would be unfair to make a clear judgment on the moral righteousness of any of the characters because they seem almost bloated with strange idiosyncratic elements such as the obsession with violence, sex, or drugs. In this, I've also found myself incapable of only indicting the male characters for their flaws because although the women of the book appear at first to be less guilty of baseness, it is simply more indirect. I am still at a loss to understand what Silko intends as commentary for the human race as a whole, and on a smaller scale the dynamic between male and female, sex and violence.