B. Northrop Frye’s mythos theory
II. Bear-myth and Set’s transformation:
2.2.3 Anagnorisis: self-discovery in imagination
The last phase in Set’s quest is anagnorisis, or the recovery/recognition of the hero. This final section explores self-recovery in Set’s journey, focusing on the part imagination plays in the novel. From my observation of the novel, imagination primarily functions through four different kinds of mediums—art, dreams, memories and visions, each will be discussed respectively in a detailed reading. Artwork has been considered thoroughly in the previous section. In this section I will sum up the part artwork plays, and carry my observations to the other forms of imaginations in the novel.
Artwork is the primary medium of Set’s imagination. In book one Set recalls his childhood, and in the process of becoming a painter, his art instructor at the academy
taught him the techniques and philosophy of creation: first and foremost is to notice the boundary of everything, and to understand that art is to create with imagination.
You see, you can make something, a line, a form, an image. But you have to proceed from what is already there—defined space, a plane. You can make something, a line, a form, an image. But you have to proceed from what is already there—defined space, a plane. You can make something out of something, but you cannot make something out of nothing. That is God’s trick […].You can affirm what is there. Art is affirmation. You can look at this model, and you can look again, and you can keep on looking until you have seen her more clearly and completely than you have ever seen
anything before, and then you can—maybe—conform your hand to your eye in such a way as to affirm her being on the picture plane. (italics original, 55)
Imagination is “to make something out of something;” the bear myth created by Set’s Kiowa ancestors is just like art. According to Set’s instructor, art is “affirmation.”
What he means is that you can create or remake by imagination, construct the figure using what you actually see with your naked eyes. What is more distinct, in addition to the physical sight of the artist, is Set later on learns to use his spiritual eye, to use his vision to look into the bear identity.
In a chapter describing Set’s childhood memories in book one, the narrator shows how imagination can transcend the “limits” and “boundaries” of artwork, allowing Set to reach infinity on perceiving the cosmologies: Set recalls when he was a boy of thirteen, and was fascinated by astronomy and learned about Ursa Major, the Great Bear. “It was his first real notion of the infinite; it struck and staggered him, and then, by the grace of God, it escaped his attention entirely” (42). Set was moved by his perception of the image of the bear in the sky. “The image [was] holy, variable,
and iridescent, brought tears to Loki’s eyes. He saw in his imagination a great, glittering ring, or a succession of rings, spiraling through convolutions without number to a point on the far side of time.” In contrary to the limitation in the
square-shaped boundaries of planes in paintings, the Great Bear in the sky is limitless, transcending the boundaries of time and space. This is the limitlessness of the
imagination that Momaday intends to signify, the ability of imagination to overstep the logic and principles of artwork.
The second form of the imagination is dreams. In dreams Set perceives the medicine woman Grey before their encounter in person. In a series of dreams, Set dreams of a young woman approaching him, and although the text doesn’t say so explicitly, by description the woman is clearly Grey. In the dream she appears as
“more than beautiful, extraordinarily graceful and sensual and live.” In addition, Set constantly dreams of his parents during his self-discovery quest. He dreams of his mother’s touch, and his father’s encouragement. Dreams in the novel served the purpose of rituals, connecting the myth of Set’s self-identity to imagination. “The dream becomes a story, a myth. Ritual has a place, so have good and evil, and there is an ineffable intimacy. Nothing is unnatural, and there is no question of right and wrong” (AC 43). In this sense, imagination is understood as similar to ritual:
“Moreover, the story understood and accepted—neither is there any question of condonation—by the audience, which is gathered with hard, interested attention about the centerpiece, the altar, of the story. And the story becomes a dream” (AC 44). In the hero’s view, the story becomes mythic in dream form, conveying clues about his ultimate destiny.
The third medium of imagination is memory. In Set’s memory “there was a certain empty space, a longing for something beyond memory. He thought often of his mother, dead almost the whole of his life. He knew that she was not the pale, lewd
ghost of his dreams; she was the touchstone of his belief in the past” (emphasis added, 45). The “empty space” is the imagination of the artist, the mind’s eye through which he perceives the past without really seeing it. Given that she died in childbirth, Set had never seen his mother before. Nevertheless, from dreams he knew her touch.
Moreover, Set asserts her place in the affirmation of his past: “she was the touchstone of his belief in the past. Without knowing her, he knew of her having been; she had given him life, even as he has taken hers; her blood pulsed upon his very heart” (45).
Through memory Set transcends time and space and travels from the present back to the past, in which his mother represents the ancestral belief of his people. Her reality was that of everything on the Native side of his existence. Here Momaday affirms the role Set’s mother plays in shaping and discovering his self-identity. “She was his immediate and most personal antecedent, the matter of which he was made, the spirit which drove his blood. He could imagine her, Catherine Locke Setman, in a way no one else could (emphasis added, 46).
The relationship between imagination and identity is indicated once again in chapter sixteen, when through his memory Set is taken back to the past as “a dream, like thought, took shape in his mind’s eye.” By recalling and re-imagining the past, he returns to a day twelve years ago when he encountered an octopus. Set dreams of the octopus, of how their lives intersected with each other at that moment. The image of the octopus appears only in book one and is portrayed as one of the outline figures—
the broad strips of colors that make up the main archetypes of the novel. The octopus reflects certain features of Set’s situation. The octopus stirs up Set’s memory because he and the creature share a few common features, first and the foremost being the lifeless condition they present under their environment: “Then I saw something in one of the pools, under a large piece of driftwood. It was an octopus, small, motionless, only partly submerged, and it seemed to be dead” (emphases added, 56). The octopus
is “partly submerged” in the surrounding water, just like Set is partly submerged in the expectations of his life as an artist. Rather than painting whatever he likes, Set must paint according to others’ expectations of him (and his art). This forces him to ignore the true self, to the point that his passion gradually diminished, and his real self
“seems to be dead,” like the octopus he sees. Set “picked up a stick and probed at it.
Suddenly it blushed pink and blue and violet and began to writhe about.” On seeing the “profound agony” of the octopus, he carried it away to the surf and laid it down.
“But the octopus settled again and lay still.” Set contemplates and “[thinks] that it might have been dealing with [him], that in its alien ocean mind it might have been struggling to take [his] presence into account, that [he] had touched its deep, essential life” (AC 56). Through re-imagining, Set re-creates the story of the octopus, giving it a meaning which reflects Set’s own inner condition; in a way, its “alien ocean mind”
and its “deep, essential life” reflects Set’s mind and life. The octopus inhabits in its
“alien, ocean” environment; likewise, Set is captured in the big city of San Francisco, alienated in his mind. Therefore even after more than ten years, Set dreams of the octopus often in his mind’s eye, and he wonders why he constantly dreams of it. His concludes to himself that “it may be that I saved its life.”The relation between the two is also imagined by Set: “Only just now, as a strange loneliness, it occurs to me that this creature has, for some years, been of some consequence in the life of my mind.
And I wonder if, in the dark night of the sea, the octopus dreams of me” (emphases added, 57).
The second common feature is the parallel mythic destiny of the creature and Set.
Through the artist’s mind’s eye he “wonders,” or imagines, his companion octopus to feel the same “strange loneliness and alienation.” He brings himself together with the creature by viewing himself as the outer power or force that stirred it up and saved its life from “seeming death,” which parallels Set’s later transformation and the outer
bear force, which will serve as the main transformative force. Set re-tells the story by recalling and re-imagining his past experience, and re-creating the story by placing a myth besides the octopus: “he [Set] had read somewhere that a man, very near this place of the octopus—a man named Viscaino, three hundred years ago—had seen grizzly bears feeding upon the carcass of a whale.” Set combines his memory of the octopus with the story of Viscaino, of the grizzly bear and whale. Set remembers that in his childhood his father told him stories, and he remembers Oklahoma City, “a country of rivers and creeks, prairies and plains.” Set “gazed upon the immensity of red and green and yellow geometry— rectangles, triangles, squares, jigsaw shapes.
The geometry rolled out forever to the skyline […] but there is exception and redemption, a redeeming disorder, the opposing aesthetic of the wilderness—the green belts slashing through the boxes like limbs of lightning, like sawteeth and scythes” (AC 57; emphasis added). In this sense, Set’s journey of anagnorisis is achieved when he rediscovers himself through the memories of the past and the imagination of myths.
It is in dreams that Set embarks on his quest for identity. On returning to his birthplace in book one, Set “had a strange feeling there, as if some ancestral intelligence had been awakened in him for the first time.” Set’s genuine self is gradually awakened in him because as he is nourished by nature: “the wild growth and the soft glowing of the earth, in the muddy water at his feet, was something profoundly original.” His birthplace is filled with a natural “glowing of the earth”
which symbolizes energy and vitality and arouses the true self and nature in Set: so he feels that he is going through “his genesis” (AC 64) when he encounters this place that is both his home and the natural earth. Another scene of identity in dreams unfolds at his birthplace: when he was half asleep, the young medicine woman Grey came to him. It was the first time she pointed out the significance of receiving the medicine
bundle. “The Grandmother, Kope’mah, wants me to give you back your medicine. It belongs to you. You must not go without it,” (AC 72) after saying these words she went away, but her shadow “appeared and reappeared” in Set’s half-consciousness, then he went to sleep again (AC 73). Readers might be curious why Grey would choose a time when Set is sleeping to tell him, but perhaps it is only in this
dreaming-imagining, half-conscious condition that Set can be assigned his mission to become the bear-boy. After going back to sleep, Set dreamed of a lifeless boy in gradual transformation:
He dreamed of the boy. The boy seemed not to stand on the ground but was suspended in the waterlike element of darkness, hanging in the way a turtle hangs in the still margin of a stream. The body was indistinct; only the face was shaped and barely delineated. It shone like a vague, powdered mask, like a skull. But he was certain it was the face of a boy, drawn, emaciated.
He could not move, but the boy approached him. There was no separation of motion in the approach; the boy simply drew up on him in that strange
suspension. And the face was slowly transformed. (emphases added, AC73) This scene corresponds to the octopus scene, where Set imagines the octopus as
“partly submerged” in water (AC 56): the boy is also “drawn and suspended in water like darkness,” which reflects Set’s situation. The boy is what Set will recover and rediscover in the quest. Set’s ultimate destiny is discovered here in dream, and he finds what he will become later in the novel.
Louis Owens also states that “Set’s search for his identity is haunted by the apparition of a young boy.” This young boy is once mistaken for Grey, and in Set’s dreams he becomes his “transformational self, the boy of the Kiowa myth. Set’s
‘other’ self is in conflict with the authoritative self Set has brought with him from Euroamerican culture.” According to Owens, the bear power is something ominous
and unimaginable that overwhelmed and changed the boy in the myth, and will do the same to Set. In Owens’ view, the “ancient child” represents “the elemental force of the natural world within us, the awesome power which the Kiowa myth articulates and which Set is rediscovering” (Owens 124). The quest is a process of overcoming the conflicting struggle and returning to Set’s natural self, after which the bear power will add to Set’s original will-power. Set was shown to oppose with the authoritative power of the white world when he was still small; in the orphanage, Peter and Paul Home, he was constantly breaking the “Castle Rules” and had Sister Stella Francesca to deal with him. Because Set got stung by bees, Sister Stella taught him about “bee wolves,” an old name for bears (AC 74). It is interesting how the two notions,
subversion and bear, connected in the end of the chapter: Set’s boyhood’s violation of the rules is directly linked to the notion of the bear, even in his memories. Set’s sense of self is dismantled and torn down before building back up in recovery. In the monologue of book two, he addresses to his adoptive father, Bent, signifying a
spiritual death for a later rebirth. Set also dreams of himself as the young boy, deep in the woods:
I was drawn to the dark interior. I felt myself moving inexorably toward a black point, the very center of the darkness. ‘Loki!’ I heard my name. It was a frantic cry, and strangely the voice was mine, I believe; I wasn’t in control;
I didn’t know clearly who or where I was. It seemed that I was trying to find myself, that I had lost my self! (emphasis added, AC 140)
Set’s quest is about losing and rediscovering the bear power and bear consciousness in him. Bent’s death triggers Set’s spiritual death, but the bear power released by the medicine bundle gradually awakens Set’s “other” self, to use Owens’ term.
And perhaps by virtue of the medicine bundle, there was insinuated upon his consciousness and subconsciousness the power of the bear. It was his
bear power, but he did not yet have real knowledge of it, only a vague, instinctive awareness, a sense he could neither own nor dispel. He was
afflicted. He was losing his physical strength steadily, he believed, or he
was losing control over the strength within him, physical and more than physical. He wanted to hide himself away, for he felt that his sickness must be apparent. He would have gone willingly enough to doctors of medicine.But this affliction was not pneumonia or malaria or tuberculosis. This was a
sickness of the mind and soul. (emphases added, AC 214)
The power of the bear is released to Set once he’s gone through this mental sickness, an ultimate death, the disappearance of his self—the sparagmos phase in the quest.
Set’s spiritual death leads to his rebirth.
The fourth and last medium of imagination in the novel is vision. On the verge of mental breakdown, Set sees visions. The bear medicine begins to instill in him the bear power, which is disturbing, violent and destructive. “There were such strange and disturbing visions in his head, such impulses to violence, such pain,” (214) and “in his desperation he became steadily more self-destructive” (AC 215). In the dark vision what Set sees is himself, being connected to the bear:
What he saw, not once but recurrently, was a dark, impending shape on a dark field of the sky. It seemed very slowly to revolve and approach. At a certain distance it was seen to be a beast, massive and indefinite. It was disintegrated, distorted, changing. The head was twisted in a severe,
unnatural attitude, as if the neck were broken. It was disintegrated, distorted, changing […] Set had the terrifying conviction that when the beast drew near to him, within reach, it would crack open with pain and […] he would dissolve in the hot contamination of the beast and become in some extreme and unholy amalgamation one with the beast. (AC 215)
While in Set’s dreams and memories he sees a child, himself as a boy, here in the vision he has a direct encounter with the bear. The bear is in immense agony, and is perhaps also Set’s alter ego. The vision of the bear in torture symbolizes violence and destruction. Additionally, the bear power is also a source of creativity and confidence:
But at the same time there were periods of great calm and creativity. Even on the verge of madness there were times of profound lucidity. The dissolution of his life seemed an illusion, and he was filled with purpose and confidence. […] He painted with great energy and clarity and assurance.
Never had his paintings been so true to his vision and his capacities. The coordination of his hand and eye was as precise as it was possible to be, he felt. His sense of proportion was extraordinary. (emphases added, AC 216) In acquiring the bear vision/power, Set becomes nearly perfect in his creativity and he gains a far more awareness of his confidence and assurance. He comes to discover the purpose of art, that “he knew exactly how to achieve the balance between appearance
Never had his paintings been so true to his vision and his capacities. The coordination of his hand and eye was as precise as it was possible to be, he felt. His sense of proportion was extraordinary. (emphases added, AC 216) In acquiring the bear vision/power, Set becomes nearly perfect in his creativity and he gains a far more awareness of his confidence and assurance. He comes to discover the purpose of art, that “he knew exactly how to achieve the balance between appearance