“The dry air shrank the wooden staves of the barrels; they pulled loose, and now the rusty steel hoops were scattered on the ground behind the corral in the crazy patterns of some flashy Kiowa hoop dancer” (p. 10).
I immediately got the sense something was not right. The broken barrels were not just broken, but they were shrank by “dry air” and the wooden staves were “pulled loose”. This all suggests to me that the barrels had been in an environment which had not seen water for a while. Furthermore, the “rusty steel hoops were scattered on the ground” hinting to abandonment and giving me a sense of dead land.
“Emo liked to point to the restless dusty wind and the cloudless skies, to the bony horses chewing on fence posts beside the highway; Emo liked to say. “Look what is here for us. Look. Here’s the Indians’ mother earth! Old dried-up thing!” (p. 25).…show more content… The “dusty wind” suggest to me that the ground must have not seen any water for a while and the “cloudless skies” just reaffirms the image of dry dead land with no vegetation. This is further supported by “bony horses” implying that they have not eaten enough because of the lack of vegetation and in order to survive they are “chewing on fence posts”. With all this in mind, the author also creates a sense of hopelessness for the characters because that “wasteland” is their “Indians’ mother earth! Old dried-up thing!” which is not just their present but also their future given to them by the white-man with no chance of
