Interpretation of "The Way to Rainy Mountain" & a Trip to Bountiful

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04/07/2013 Sacred Memories In N. Scott Momaday’s essay, “The Way to Rainy Mountain” and the 1985 movie The Trip to Bountiful the main characters of each, Scott Momaday and Mrs. Watts are each seeking their roots. A pursuit to live happier based on memories of the past in the case of Mrs. Watts and a replication of the migration the Kiowa’s, Mr. Momadays ancestors, took that landed them at Rainy Mountain. Mrs. Watts and Mr. Momaday both reach the end of their journeys but realize that without the people who were a part of these communities nothing is the same. The two works start their plots with the main characters, Mrs. Watts and Momaday already having made up their minds that they want to go back to each of their family homes. Momaday has a void in his life from missing his grandmother’s final days and her funeral, but he takes a specific path to her grave that he may have felt would help him understand things like customs and stories of the Kiowa people. On his journey he aimed to collect first hand experience of everything he knew about his ancestry and to symbolically end it at the resting place of the last Kiowa, his grandmother. On his pilgrimage he visits things like the Black Hills that his grandmother spoke of but had never seen. He went back with the intent of experiencing the things his grandmother talked about in stories for himself, as well and seeing things from a now older and more knowledgeable point of view. It was a sort of investigative report on his ancestors where he really took his time to experience everything for himself and interpret what was told to him by his grandmother. His research would likely end up being the final record of his people, and probably the last to contain any first hand experiences of the Kiowa. Mrs. Watts is planning on doing what the title says and taking a trip to Bountiful. She is nostalgic

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