Montana 1948
What characters are mentioned in the prologue?
What characters are mentioned in the prologue?
What characters are mentioned in the prologue?
The novel opens with the narrator reflecting on vivid images from the summer when he was 12 years old. Despite his best efforts to erase these images, they remain etched in his mind. The images are of a sick young Sioux woman, the narrator’s father on his knees begging, and the narrator’s mother holding a gun. Other, less traumatic images are the sound of breaking glass and the smell of rotting vegetables. The narrator says these images exist simultaneously in his memory like a movie screen divided into panels and boxes or a Sioux picture calendar where a whole year’s events are painted onto the same buffalo hide. However, for the sake of the story he will present his images, or memories, in a chronological order. He reveals that these events occurred 40 years ago during the summer of 1948, and that his mother and father are now both dead. As for the Sioux woman, he can’t tell us yet what has happened to her, because her fate reveals too much of his story.