Without Title

 

Without Title – For my Father who lived without Ceremonies

 Dian Glancy

 

This poem was written as a tribute to Glancy’s father who happened to be a Native American.  He was a member of the Cherokee tribe. Later he moved to the city and married an Anglo German woman. Throughout his life he felt a cultural loneliness as he was separated from his tribe and he couldn't reconcile with his modern way of life. Cherokee was a North American tribe. They were highly religious and spiritual. They were extensively relied upon hunting for a living.  Among them there are lots of rituals and ceremonies associated with hunting. The shaman gave them guidance. He was acted as an intermediary between natural and supernatural world.  He used his magical powers to cure illness, foretell the future, control the spiritual forces etc.

The title of the poem is ‘Without Title - For My Father who lived without Ceremony’.  The title shows the uprooted state of the narrator’s father.  As he was separated from his tribe he could not undertake any ‘vision quest ‘or achieve a title.  At the same time he was very much dedicated to his family.  He took care of his family even though no one appreciated him.

            The poem opens with various references to the Native American tradition of hunting. Hunting animals especially buffaloes was an integral part of their life.  The shaman performed various rituals before and after hunting. Moreover the Cherokee’s had a spiritual relationship with the buffaloes. Buffaloes were revered for their sacred powers and their capacity to bring good fortune to the tribe.  That's why they performed various rituals before and after hunting.  So without buffalo, Shaman and arrow hunting was not possible. But here the narrator’s father went out each day to his work as if he was going for a hunt. Besides he forgets the fact that there was no buffalo shaman and arrow, the elements necessary for a hunt.  Even after his marriage to a modern woman he thought himself as a hunter. Here the poet uses the metaphor of hunting to replace the everyday work of his life.  It shows that how much the father was struggled in his life without his ancestral traditions such as hunting.

The fifth line of the poem shows the real profession of the father.  He was not actually a hunter.  But he was a worker in the stockyard (where live stocks like cattle, sheep etc. were kept). Lines 7 and 8 refer to some Cherokee traditions. These lines said that ‘no one marked his first kill’ and ‘no one sang his buffalo song’.  Here ‘marked’ stands for a Native American ritual. When a Native American boy made his first kill, it was celebrated with various rituals. His first kill marks his entry into adulthood.  Likewise buffalo song is a Cherokee ceremony performed when a boy kills his first buffalo. The next three lines show that the father's ancestry was important to him.  But that was missing in his life. If he was living in the time of his ancestors’, his first kill would have been celebrated as his entry into manhood.  These lines also illustrate the character of the narrator’s father.  The poet says that ‘all his life he brought us meat’ which shows that he was loyal and responsible to his family and took care of his family even though no one seemed to care or gave him credit.

The narrator's father migrated to the city and decided to work in the stockyard without having a vision. Here ‘vision’ stands for the Native American rite of passage known as a vision quest. A vision quest represents a turning point in the life of an adolescent boy and consisting of a journey alone in the wilderness, sometimes accompanied by fasting, leading to a vision from a spirit. Then the child will obtain his life’s direction. After the quest he was awarded with a new title (it was his adult name) which marked his entry into adulthood. But here the narrator’s father decided to move to the city without any rites of passage. Here we can also see the humiliation faced by the father. In the evenings he came back to home deadly tired after his work. He brought with him the horns and hides of the slaughtered animal. Cherokees never wasted any part of the hunted animal, maybe because of this reason the father did the same. But his wife was never happy with this habit. She asked him to get rid of them. Here horns and hides stand for Native American tradition. She insulted her husband in front of the children. She hated her husband's love for Cherokees tradition.

 The next part of the poem shows how the father really believed and had faith in his ancestral tradition. Everything reminds him of hunting and his Native American tribal culture.  Here the poet compares the car’s tyre tracks to the tracks that wild animals make on the snow. Instead of being able to read the movements of the wild animals according to the marks they leave on the snow the speakers father just leave tracks on the snow with the tyres of his car. Thus the figure of speech is metaphor. The aerial or the antenna of his car was compared to the string of the bow of an archer. The aerial of the car is also slim and strong like the string of a bow. It is an example of simile used in this poem. The narrator could not physically see his father's loss but she could feel its presence. Even though her father was away from his tribe, the tradition was still inside him. Their traditions are still alive in his dreams and in his soul. The father's snore was compared to the grunt of a buffalo and here the figure of speech is simile.

 Two worlds or cultures are compared in this poem- the Native American society and the mainstream American society. The speaker talks about hunting in the wild which Native Americans did but the father hunted in the stockyards. Native American boys went on vision quest to find the spiritual meaning of their life but the father was without a vision when he migrated to the city to work in a packing house. In mainstream American society a boy becomes a man when he starts working and earning money. Narrator’s father did the same. But the maturity that the father achieved was not the same as in Native American culture. Thus it is clear that culture is vital in shaping identities and to be dispossessed of it creates a deep sense of loss.