Black Elk as a Romantic Hero Compared to Werther

TTable of contents
1. Introduction
2. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse
3. Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
4. Conclusion
5. References

The main goal of this paper is to present a comparative analysis of the Black Elk as the main hero of the work by Neihardt “Black Elk Speaks” and the hero of the well – known book by Goethe “The Sorrows of Young Werther”. It seems appropriate to present some short descriptions of the main ideas of the books, some facts about the authors and also about the history of creation of the works, as all this is really important for a deeper and more detailed analysis of the main heroes.
The story of the Black Elk is presented by the author in an unusual way; the readers become the witnesses of the meeting between two men – between Black Elk and somebody else. From the story we get to know that Black Elk is telling Neighardt about such thing he didn’t dare to talk to his closest friends about. This is a kind of a unique technique of the author. This helps first of all to develop some unusual and intimate atmosphere of the story and contributes to the presentation of the main hero as a romantic one as well, as his individuality turns out to be even more complicated and besides covered by some mystery veil. The author does his best to make the readers feel the same respect and interest towards the history and culture of Sioux he does.
An important fact is that the main hero is convinced that he actually failed to become a good leader for his people. He even comes to a conclusion that the task to maintain the “sacred hoop of his nation” was not completed by him and that the culture of Sioux is therefore lost. Most scholars do not accept this point of view – they on the contrary believe that this culture survived but was reborn into some new form of reservation life.
It is not clear for the reader whose choice - either Neighardt or the Black elk – was to end the story with the massacre at Wounded Knee, and neither can we be sure that in this way the author wanted to add some “spices” to the romanticized view of Sioux life.
The book “Black Elk speaks” was supposed to become a truly Indian book, the author wanted to create a good novel and Black Elk’s reason for doing it was to make and save the records about the culture, life style and traditions of his people. This characterizes Black Elk as not a person concentrated upon himself, but as really a kind of a soul and mind of his tribe, as humanist and really important historical figure. The author had his own attitude to the “other” world and his main idea concerning this was presented in the second paragraph of the story already: “It is the story of all life that is holy and is good to tell, and of us two-leggeds sharing in it with the four-leggeds and the wings of the air and all green things; for these are children of one mother and their father is one Spirit” (1).
The doubts about life and his choice in life of Black Elk are a little alike with those of the main character of Goethe’s novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther”– Werther. But the great difference is the fact that Black Elk was trying to take care and felt responsible for the whole tribe, and Werther couldn’t even cope with some problems about his mother’s household. He created his own “paradise” getting to know some “nice” people. It is hard to be really critical about his shooting himself, as he was suffering from his love to Lotte, the question whether suicide is a weakness of a human’s nature or the result of his power as he could decide to kill himself, is still without concrete answer.
There is an opinion that the story of Werther has some aerobiological characteristics, it comes from the statement of Goethe in his letter to C.F.Zelter: “Werther hardly leaves anyone doubting that all of the symptoms of this wonder- ous, as natural as unnatural disease have once roamed within me, too. I still remember quite well what efforts it has cost me to escape the waves of death back then...” (2).
Overall, the two above mentioned heroes are both rather bright personalities and their stories, emotional experience and views certainly grasp the attention of the readers, but they still present different types of romantic heroes – one being the real hero of his nation, of his people, and the other reflecting the moral sufferings of the author of the book and sinking into the inner world of the person experiencing unrequited love.

Sources:

1. “Black Elk Speaks” , Neihardt
2. “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, Goethe