52 pages • 1 hour read
Montana 1948
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PrologueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
The prologue describes the narrator’s memories of the summer he was twelve years old. These take the form of a series of images, including a very sick young Sioux woman, his father on his knees begging his mother to help him, and his mother loading a shotgun and preparing to use it. He also mentions the sound of breaking glass and the smell of rotting vegetables.
All of these memories are mixed together in David’s mind without a clear chronology: “Imagine instead a movie screen divided into boxes or panels, each with its own scene, so that one moment can occur simultaneously with another, . . . so nothing happens before or after, only during” (Prologue, xvi).
Prologue Analysis
The prologue establishes David as the first-person narrator of the book. He points out that he is telling us what happened forty years earlier and that he is the last surviving eyewitness. Now that both of his parents are dead, David feels able to tell the truth about what he knows.
He also establishes the recurring images that he associates with the terrible events. The strongest memories are of sounds, including a woman’s coughing, his father’s pleading voice asking for help from his mother, the sound of a shotgun blast, and the sound of breaking glass.
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