Black Elks Oral Narrative essays

Black Elks Oral Narrative essays John Neihardt was the one person that Black Elk would share his visions with. Black Elk wanted to pass along to future generations some of the reality of Oglala life. For this reason, Neihardt should have felt privileged and made it his main goal to make sure he interpreted everything in as much detail as possible. For Neihardt to suppress unnecessary details, alter awkward expressions, and introduce a tone of reverence and solemnity, takes away from the story that Black Elk was trying to relay. Black Elk probably wouldnt have even told his story to Neihardt had he knew the way Neihardt would write his story with so many missing details. For most general readers, the story was easier to follow without the detailed omissions. Neihardt most likely made theses omissions for the reason that it would be easier to understand. However, the detailed omissions are significant to some people such as anthropologists and people of religion. The transcript has all the specific details, but Neihardts story fails at relaying all Black Elk wanted to share with future generations. Black Elk intended for his whole oral narrative to be translated and put into his story, and Neihardt failed him. The ending does transmute the oral narrative into literature. Neihardt was trying to make the story more reader friendly, but he should have realized that this particular story should have been told the way Black Elk told the story. Neihardt ended the story as though it was him writing his own story. Neihardt should have just ended the story the way it should have been ended, and that is with the words of Black Elk. Neihardt was definitely the speaker at the end because Black Elk would not have said anything about not being sure whether that part of the story happened or not. Neihardt was basically ending the story in a way that he felt was a good way to end the story from a literature standpoint. ...