The Bitter Humor of "Winter in the Blood"

Abstract

American Indian narrator of James Welch's Winter in the Blood states that his father froze to death one winter evening on the way home after making the white men in a local bar laugh. bitter irony of this important event is the kind of harsh truth the narrator confronts in his effort to redeem himself. He is his father's son but he is determined not to die his father's death. Humor, bitter and ironic rather than funny in a pure comic sense, thus becomes a selfprotecting mask which the narrator uses to keep from being crushed by his circumstances. At the same time, humor is also a tool by which he manages to gain some degree of perspective on and control over his troubled life. To better understand the unfunny situation the narrator finds himself in as a young contemporary Indian distanced from his Indian past, the land, the white culture around him, his living relatives, and most significantly, from himself, it is necessary to remember the importance of humor and comedy in the American Indian tradition. Like the Aristophanic comedies from ancient Greece, the Indian comic ceremony-dramas that have been passed down are celebrations of life. They are religious rituals which evoke laughter as a liberating force. Employing song, dance, sexual farce, slapstick, and drama, these ceremonies were truly a group experience, a celebration of community. The Raingod Drama of the San Juan Pueblo Indians, for instance, ends with the spirit of harmony that follows a catharsis of fear: