Second Person Narrative in Stone Heart

In Stone Heart, the Sacajawea Imaginary begins with the “YOU” pronoun.

Such a “you” narrative invites the reader to imagine him/herself in the narratee’s place.

In this way, the inclusiveness of you-pronoun tends to lump the reader and the protagonist together; that is, the reader may have the illusion of identifying with the protagonist. If the reader has the illusion of being in the place of Sacajawea, then the words may appear to be perceived somehow in a first-person narrative in the reader’s mind. The following is how the reader may tend to get from the reading:

[I] see horses coming from the sky.

[I] see them change into canoes and [I am] rowing.

[I] see [my] oars are wings.

[I] hear the clouds talking.

They talk until they are shouting.

Their voices are hailstones pounding the river.

The water is turbulent and hard to row.

[I] shake [my] oars which are wings.

But [I] do not fly. (SH 11)

Actually, the above passages are exactly what Sacajawea is made to say in the

beginning of Glancy’s play Stone Heart: Everyone Loves a Journey West.⁸ As the story goes on, the reader may soon realize the second-person pronoun refers to the narratee-protagonist in the story, and then he/she would have problems of identifying with the narratee. For instance, when the reader reads the following paragraph near the very beginning, he/she immediately realizes that he/she cannot put him/herself into the position of the narratee:

YOU COME TO the Mandan village with Toussaint Charbonneau and Otter Woman […] Otter Woman and you are Shoshoni from the headwaters of the river. You were kidnapped by the Hidatsa. Toussaint bought Otter Woman and you from the Hidatsa. You want to return to the headwaters of the river. You want to return to the Shoshoni. (emphasis added, SH 12)

As the text progresses, the reader begins to uncover specific details or circumstances, which will cause the reader to distance him/herself from the identity of the intended addressee of the text, and in effect, to view the “you” as referring to another character much like the third person pronoun. As the reader may realize, the addressee “you”

refers to someone who comes to the Mandan village with Toussaint Charbonneau and Otter Woman, someone who is Shoshoni, someone who is kidnapped by the Hidatsa and bought by Toussaint from the Hidatsa. Therefore, the reader may shift his/her own position of reading, he/she may begin to regard the pronoun “you” as “she /her” since all the information contributes to the fact that she is a Shoshone girl who, with her husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, accompanies Lewis and Clark on their expedition to the West. Then reader might perceive the paragraph mentioned above more in this way:

8 Stone Heart: Everyone Loves a Journey West is Diane Glancy’s play for Native Voices. The play is based on Glancy’s novel Stone Heart: A Novel of Sacajawea.

[SHE COMES] TO the Mandan village with Toussaint Charbonneau and Otter Woman […] Otter Woman and [she] are Shoshoni from the headwaters of the river. [They] were kidnapped by the Hidatsa. Toussaint bought Otter Woman and [her] from the Hidatsa. [She wants] to return to the headwaters of the river. [She wants] to return to the Shoshoni. (SH 12)

As the reader of the Sacajawea Imaginary, he/she will oscillate in a complex way between being a participant in the fictional world and in the literary world, moving back and forth between distinct locations, as speaker, listener, or even someone who overhears. Even though the positioning of the reader is indeterminate and shifting, the narrative “you,” that is, the narratee-protagonist, Sacajawea, is most of the time at a point of reception, or listening, rather than at a point of speaking.

Actually, in terms of the triad (of narrator, protagonist, and narratee) which DelConte proposes, I wonder whether Stone Heart is a novel with the coincidence of narratee, protagonist, narrator, or it is a novel with a coincidence of narratee and protagonist but a distinct narrator. Does the novel present the completely-coincident narration among narratee, protagonist, and narrator, or does it just exhibit the partially-coincident narration? If the role of the “narrator” is indeterminate, then there will be two possibilities: one is that Glancy tells Sacajawea’s story to Sacajawea; the other is that Sacajawea addresses to herself by substituting the “I” with you. We need to compare the relationships between narrator and narratee-protagonist in order to articulate the connection between narrative voices and thematics.

Besides, I believe it is important to incorporate the role of the “reader” into discussion over the relationships between the narrator and the narratee-protagonist.

Therefore, developed from DelConte’s model of the triad, I would like to propose a

model of the triad of narrator, narratee-protagonist,⁹ and the “reader.” In this way, I argue that the indeterminate relationships between them will engage the reader in different positioning of interpreting the text differently as well. Each of them, I believe, intriguingly contributes to Glancy’s concerns.

In Stone Heart, the “you”—narrative produces very distinctive rhetorical effects, which privilege the reader to access Sacajawea in several different ways. In “Why You Can’t Speak,” DelConte proposed a model based on the triad of narrator, protagonist, and narratee. According to him, this may correspond to the elements of traditions rhetorical model, speaker, text, and the audience (210). Nevertheless, I would argue it is essential to incorporate the audience “outside” the text, by which I mean the “reader”—the audience who undertakes reading Stone Heart—into the discussion of the novel for Glancy’s Stone Heart, in a way, addresses two distinct audiences, one internal to the story and the other external. In the following, I will explore the triad relationships between narrator, narratee-protagonist, and reader in Stone Heart. I will demonstrate the indeterminacy implicated in the use of second person narrative. I will view from two ways of narration: one is partially-coincident narration of narratee and protagonist, while the other is completely-coincident narration. I will incorporate the role of the “reader” into my discussion on the rhetorical effects of second person narrative in Stone Heart.

First, the reader may identify with the narrator, that is, the reader imagines him/herself in the position of the narrator who addresses to someone who calls by the second person pronoun “you.” In such a case, the “you” narrative invites the reader to imagine him/herself in the narrator’s place and imagine him/herself in the position of

9 The Sacajawea Imaginary is a narrative in which Sacajawea is the narratee as well as the protagonist in the story she is told. Because of the coincidence of narratee and protagonist, I would like to see the two as one.

speaking, having a dialogue with Sacajawea.

Second, the reader may identify with the narratee-protagonist, that is, the reader may imagine him/herself in the position of listening, addressed by the narrator that Glancy represents. In this case, the reader will feel empathic with Sacajawea. The inclusiveness of the “you” pronoun lumps the reader and the narratee-protagonist together. Glancy, the narrator, uses the “you” to address to Sacajawea and emphasizes the existence from the outside. The narrative technique manifests the notion that someone or something outside of yourself dictates your thought and action. In such a form, Glancy addresses the reader directly and, furthermore, forcefully draws him/her into the story as if he/she is experiencing Sacajawea’s life.

Third, the reader imagines him/herself neither in the position of the narrator, nor in the position of the narratee, but as someone who overhears a narrator addressing to a narratee. In other words, the reader overhears and witnesses what Glancy addresses to Sacajawea. Here, it seems that the narrator shares with the narratee a private conversation with the reader happening to be present.

In the condition of completely-coincident narration, likewise, the reader imagines him/herself neither in the position of speaker, nor in that of listener. Rather the reader imagines himself/herself as someone who overhears the narrator talking.

The reader is, at this instance, “other” to this fiction, overhearing Sacajawea’s thoughts directed to herself. This is probably the case as some critics have commented.

Zaleski contends that “Glancy has fashioned an imaginative, second-person diary by the legendary Shoshone guide” (emphasis added, 987). Likewise, Flanagan writes that

“Sacajawea, the Shoshone heroine native who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their framed expedition, narrates this fictional version of the magnificent, yet harrowing, journey” (emphasis added, 987). Zaleski and Flanagan both believe that the voice of the poetic account of Sacajawea’s experience is told through Sacajawea. I argue that

such a second-person narrative reveals the internal thoughts of Sacajawea through her interior monologue to herself. That is to say, the reader overhears Sacajawea’s self-address to herself and therefore enter the state of mind of Sacajawea.

Incorporating the role of the reader into the processing of the novel will complicate the reading of Stone Heart, but it reveals a sense of indeterminacy while reading the novel. This sense of indeterminacy resulted from oscillating between the narrator, the narratee-protagonist, and the observer, engages the reader in a process of active reading even more. In the following, I will focus on the effects of Glancy’s use of the second-person narrative.