ms. sue only one story be due today and i do questions myself for that one but this one i need help you please help me?
this be emily carr story d'sonoqua
D’Sonoqua
I was sketching in a remote Indian village when I first saw her. The village was one of those that the Indians use only for a few months in each year; the rest of the time it stands empty and desolate. I went there in one of its empty times, in a drizzling dusk.
When the Indian agent dumped me on the beach in front of the village, he said ‘There is not a soul here. I will come back for you in two days.’ Then he went away.
I had a small griffon dog with me, and also a little Indian girl, who, when she saw the boat go away, clung to my sleeve and wailed, ‘I’m ’fraid.’
We went up to the old deserted Mission House. At the sound of the key in the rusty lock, rats scuttled away. The stove was broken, the wood wet. I had forgotten to bring candles. We spread our blankets on the floor, and spent a poor night. Perhaps my lack of sleep played its part in the shock that I got, when I saw her for the first time.
Water was in the air, half mist, half rain. The stinging nettles, higher than my head, left their nervy smart on my ears and forehead, as I beat my way through them, trying all the while to keep my feet on the plank walk which they hid. Big yellow slugs crawled on the walk and slimed it. My feet slipped and I shot headlong to her very base, for she had no feet. The nettles that were above my head reached only to her knee.
It was not the fall alone that jerked the ‘Oh’s’ out of me, for the great wooden image towering above me was indeed terrifying.
The nettle bed ended a few yards beyond her, and then a rocky bluff jutted out, with waves battering it below. I scrambled up and went out on the bluff, so that I could see the creature above the nettles. The forest was behind her, the sea in front.
Figure: D'Sonoqua, v. 1912 aquarelle sur papier carton (75,9 cm x 42,2 cm) British Columbia Archives (PDP00933)
Her head and trunk were carved out of, or rather into, the bole of a great red cedar. She seemed to be part of the tree itself, as if she had grown there at its heart, and the carver had only chipped away the outer wood so that you could see her. Her arms were spliced and socketed to the trunk, and were flung wide in a circling, compelling movement. Her breasts were two eagle-heads, fiercely carved. That much, and the column of her great neck, and her strong chin, I had seen when I slithered to the ground beneath her. Now I saw her face.
The eyes were two rounds of black, set in wider rounds of white, and placed in deep sockets under wide, black eyebrows. Their fixed stare bored into me as if the very life of the old cedar looked out, and it seemed that the voice of the tree itself might have burst from that great round cavity, with projecting lips, that was her mouth: Her ears were round, and stuck out to catch all sounds. The salt air had not dimmed the heavy red of her trunk and arms and thighs. Her hands were black, with blunt finger-tips painted a dazzling white. I stood looking at her for a long, long time.
The rain stopped, and white mist came up from the sea, gradually paling her back into the forest. It was as if she belonged there, and the mist were carrying her home. Presently the mist took the forest too, and, wrapping them both together, hid them away.
‘Who is that image?’ I asked the little Indian girl, when I got back to the house.
She knew which one I meant, but to gain time, she said, ‘What image?’
‘The terrible one, out there on the bluff.’
‘I dunno,’ she lied.
I never went to that village again, but the fierce wooden image often came to me, both in my waking and in my sleeping.
Several years passed, and I was once more sketching in an Indian village. There were Indians in this village, and in a mild backward way it was ‘going modern’. That is, the Indians had pushed the forest back a little to let the sun touch the new buildings that were replacing the old community houses. Small houses, primitive enough to a white man’s thinking, pushed here and there between the old. Where some of the big community houses had been torn down, for the sake of the lumber, the great corner posts and massive roof-beams of the old structure were often left, standing naked against the sky, and the new little house was built inside, on the spot where the old one had been.
It was in one of these empty skeletons that I found her again. She had once been a supporting post for the great centre beam. Her pole-mate, representing the Raven, stood opposite her, but the beam that had rested on their heads was gone. The two poles faced in, and one judged the great size of the house by the distance between them. The corner posts were still in place, and the earth floor, once beaten to the hardness of rock by naked feet, was carpeted now with rich lush grass.
I knew her by the stuck-out ears, shouting mouth, and deep eye-sockets. These sockets had no eye-balls, but were empty holes, filled with stare. The stare, though not so fierce as that of the former image, was more intense. The whole figure expressed power, weight, domination, rather than ferocity. Her feet were planted heavily on the head of the squatting bear, carved beneath them. A man could have sat on either huge shoulder. She was unpainted, weather-worn, sun-cracked, and the arms and hands seemed to hang loosely. The fingers were thrust into the carven mouths of two human heads, held crowns down. From behind, the sun made unfathomable shadows in eye, cheek and mouth. Horror tumbled out of them.
I saw Indian Tom on the beach, and went to him.
‘Who is she?’
The Indian’s eyes, coming slowly from across the sea, followed my pointing finger. Resentment showed in his face, greeny-brown and wrinkled like a baked apple,—resentment that white folks should pry into matters wholly Indian.
‘Who is that big carved woman?’ I repeated.
‘D’Sonoqua.’ No white tongue could have fondled the name as he did.
‘Who is D’Sonoqua?’
‘She is the wild woman of the woods.’
‘What does she do?’
‘She steals children.’
‘To eat them?’
‘No, she carries them to her caves; that,’ pointing to a purple scar on the mountain across the bay, ‘is one of her caves. When she cries `OO-oo-oo-oeo’, Indian mothers are too frightened to move. They stand like trees, and the children go with D’Sonoqua.’
‘Then she is bad?’
‘Sometimes bad … sometimes good,’ Tom replied, glancing furtively at those stuck-out ears. Then he got up and walked away.
I went back, and sitting in front of the image, gave stare for stare. But her stare so over-powered mine, that I could scarcely wrench my eyes away from the clutch of those empty sockets. The power that I felt was not in the thing itself, but in some tremendous force behind it, that the carver had believed in.
A shadow passed across her hands and their gruesome holdings. A little bird, with its beak full of nesting material, flew into the cavity of her mouth, right in the pathway of that terrible OO-oo-oo-oeo. Then my eye caught something that I had missed—a tabby cat asleep between her feet.
This was D’Sonoqua, and she was a supernatural being, who belonged to these Indians.
‘Of course,’ I said to myself,‘ I do not believe in supernatural beings. Still—who understands the mysteries behind the forest? What would one do if one did meet a supernatural being?’ Half of me wished that I could meet her, and half of me hoped I would not.
Chug—chug—the little boat had come into the bay to take me to another village, more lonely and deserted than this. Who knew what I should see there? But soon supernatural beings went clean out of my mind, because I was wholly absorbed in being naturally seasick.
When you have been tossed and wracked and chilled, any wharf looks good, even a rickety one, with its crooked legs stockinged in barnacles. Our boat nosed under its clammy darkness, and I crawled up the straight slimy ladder, wondering which was worse, natural seasickness, or supernatural ‘creeps’. The trees crowded to the very edge of the water, and the outer ones, hanging over it, shadowed the shoreline into a velvet smudge. D’Sonoqua might walk in places like this. I sat for a long time on the damp, dusky beach, waiting for the stage. One by one dots of light popped from the scattered cabins, and made the dark seem darker. Finally the stage came.
We drove through the forest over a long straight road, with black pine trees marching on both sides. When we came to the wharf the little gas mail-boat was waiting for us. Smell and blurred light oozed thickly out of the engine room, and except for one lantern on the wharf everything else was dark. Clutching my little dog, I sat on the mail sacks which had been tossed on to the deck.
The ropes were loosed, and we slid out into the oily black water. The moon that had gone with us through the forest was away now. Black pine-covered mountains jagged up on both sides of the inlet like teeth. Every gasp of the engine shook us like a great sob. There was no rail round the deck, and the edge of the boat lay level with the black slithering horror below. It was like being swallowed again and again by some terrible monster, but never going down. As we slid through the water, hour after hour, I found myself listening for the OO-oo-oooeo.
Midnight brought us to a knob of land, lapped by the water on three sides, with the forest threatening to gobble it up on the fourth. There was a rude landing, a rooming-house, an eating-place, and a store, all for the convenience of fishermen and loggers. I was given a room, but after I had blown out my candle, the stillness and the darkness would not let me sleep. In the brilliant sparkle of the morning when everything that was not superlatively blue was superlatively green, I dickered with a man who was taking a party up the inlet that he should drop me off at the village I was headed for.
‘But,’ he protested, ‘there is nobody there.’
To myself I said, ‘There is D’Sonoqua.’
From the shore, as we rowed to it, came a thin feminine cry—the mewing of a cat. The keel of the boat had barely grated in the pebbles, when the cat sprang aboard, passed the man shipping his oars, and crouched for a spring into my lap. Leaning forward, the man seized the creature roughly, and with a cry of ‘Dirty Indian vermin!’ flung her out into the sea.
I jumped ashore, refusing his help, and with a curt ‘Call for me at sun-down,’ strode up the beach; the cat followed me.
When we had crossed the beach and come to a steep bank, the cat ran ahead. Then I saw that she was no lean, ill-favoured Indian cat, but a sleek aristocratic Persian. My snobbish little griffon dog, who usually refused to let an Indian cat come near me, surprised me by trudging beside her in comradely fashion.
The village was typical of the villages of these Indians. It had only one street, and that had only one side, because all the houses faced the beach. The two community houses were very old, dilapidated and bleached, and the Landful of other shanties seemed never to have been young; they had grown so old before they were finished, that it was then not worth while finishing them.
Rusty padlocks carefully protected the gaping walls. There was the usual broad plank in front of the houses, the general sitting and sunning place for Indians. Little streams ran under it, and weeds poked up through every crack, half hiding the companies of tins, kettles, and rags, which patiently waited for the next gale and their next move. In front of the Chief’s house was a high, carved totem pole, surmounted by a large wooden eagle. Storms had robbed him of both wings, and his head had a resentful twist, as if he blamed somebody. The heavy wooden heads of two squatting bears peered over the nettle-tops. The windows were too high for peeping in or out. ‘But, save D’Sonoqua, who is there to peep?’ I said aloud, just to break the silence. A fierce sun burned down as if it wanted to expose every ugliness and forlorness. It drew the noxious smell out of the skunk cabbages, growing in the rich black ooze of the stream, scummed the waterbarrels with green slime, and branded the desolation into my very soul.
The cat kept very close, rubbing and bumping itself and purring ecstatically; and although I had not seen them come, two more cats had joined us. When I sat down they curled into my lap, and then the strangeness of the place did not bite into me so deeply. I got up, determined to look behind the houses.
Nettles grew in the narrow spaces between the houses. I beat them down; and made my way over the bruised dark-smelling mass into a space of low jungle. Long ago the trees had been felled and left lying. Young forest had burst through the slash, making an impregnable barrier, and sealing up the secrets which lay behind it. An eagle flew out of the forest, circled the village, and flew back again.
Once again I broke silence, calling after him, ‘Tell D’Sonoqua—’ and turning, saw her close, towering above me in the jungle.
Like the D’Sonoqua of the other villages she was carved into the bole of a red cedar tree. Sun and storm had bleached the wood, moss here and there softened the crudeness of the modelling; sincerity underlay every stroke.
She appeared to be neither wooden nor stationary, but a singing spirit, young and fresh, passing through the jungle. No violence coarsened her; no power domineered to wither her. She was graciously feminine. Across her forehead her creator had fashioned the Sistheutl, or mythical two-headed sea-serpent. One of its heads fell to either shoulder, hiding the stuck-out ears, and framing her face from a central parting on her forehead which seemed to increase its womanliness.
She caught your breath, this D’Sonoqua, alive in the dead bole of the cedar. She summed up the depth and charm of the whole forest, driving away its menace.
I sat down to sketch. What was the noise of purring and rubbing going on about my feet? Cats. I rubbed my eyes to make sure I was seeing right, and counted a dozen of them. They jumped into my lap and sprang to my shoulders. They were real—and very feminine.
There we were—D’Sonoqua, the cats and I—the woman who only a few moments ago had forced herself to come behind the houses in trembling fear of the ‘wild woman of the woods’—wild in the sense that forest-creatures are wild—shy, untouchable.
her opening word be "i was sketching in a remote indian village when I first saw her." why we not be shown her identity till 6th paragraph?
it be because she describing indian atmosphere first?
where do the 3 parts of this selection each start and end? how do the 3 images of d;sonqua form a development?
i not get these one
A journey by water follows carr’s visit to each image. Afar its structural function, do it have representative role? For ex: There was no rail round the deck, and the edge of the boat lay level with the black slithering horror below. It was like being swallowed again and again by some terrible monster, but never going down. As we slid through the water, hour after hour, I found myself listening for the OO-oo-oo-oeo.
this one be that she enter a foreign world?
I've printed this story and your questions. I'll read it and get back to you within an hour.
1. Yes, she's describing the atmosphere. By waiting til the sixth paragraph, the author has increased the mystery and the tension about who "she" is.
2. I think the three parts are the three villages she visited and the three different statues/spirits she sees. Her reaction to each is different.
3. The author makes us feel the distances and even horror of entering the Indians' lives. Many tribes are strongly influenced by the spirit world, which scares people who are not part of these tribes.
thanks very much ms. sue :)
You're very welcome, Mohammad.
By the way, are you going to have assignments on the book, The Glass Castle?