The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

seeing for some time, and by this marriage effectively conveys to
the narrator his ineffectiveness as rancher and man. The narrator
does not like his new stepfather but works alongside him when
necessary. Between times, he goes to town to try to find the Cree
girl and persuade her to return to him. He gets involved in a
series of sexual encounters that are distinguished mainly by their
lack of caring and by his observation of pain in the lives of the
women he meets.
The Cree woman’s brother beats him up, and he joins with a
white man who seems even more surreal than himself. None of
the encounters in the novel are notable for their meaningfullness
except those with Yellow Calf and Teresa. The nameless
narrator is so out of touch with himself that his long past
relationships with his dead brother and father have more
meaning for him than any of his contemporary ones, and he is
adrift in a life that lacks shape, goal, understanding, or
significance.
In the end, it is his recognition of his estrangement that leads
him through his impasse and allows him to reintegrate his
personality around realistic perceptions of himself and the
reality he inhabits. “I wondered if Mose and First Raise were
comfortable. They were the only ones I really loved, I thought,
the only ones who were good to be with.” 14
Lying in the rain, stiff and unwilling to move, the narrator
finally confronts himself. It is a gentle encounter that enables him
to understand that acceptance is the better part of grief. “Some
people, I thought, will never know how pleasant it is to be
distant in a clean rain … It’s not like you’d expect, nothing like
you’d expect.” 15
I n The Death of Jim Loney, Jim does not come to selfrealization
and the healing that accompanies it so gently.
Haunted by the absence of a past or of any lasting relationships,
Jim’s search for significance, for meaning, flows in a downward