The+Beadwork


 * Summary-** In the chapter Beadwork, Zitkala- Sa learns how to create beadwork with her mother. She would watch her mother work on Zitkala-Sa's "little moccasins". The first couple designs that Zitkala-Sa created were boxes and crosses. The first couple times she tried to create beadwork, she learned that the beadwork takes a lot of time and patients and Zitkala-Sa hasn’t exactly learned to have patients yet. So it will just take time for her to learn the time and patients she needs for beadwork. Once she became somewhat good at beadwork, and her mother taught her how to sew tinted porcupine quills. After learning how to create beadwork she was playing with her friends, there were four or five of them and they would pick "sweet roots" with sharp rods. After they had a lot of the roots, they would pretend to be their mothers, exchanging gifts and talking about things they had heard their mothers talking about. They would tell stories about brave relatives while the others would exclaim, "Yes, yes". One day Zitkala-Sa, looked down at her shadow, and decided to try and catch it. She became upset because she couldn't catch it. She and her friends were trying to catch her shadow when she realized that there was a vital bond between her shadow and her.


 * Analysis-** The chapter Beadwork, shows that Zitkala-Sa wants to learn and wants to put time and effort into beadworking. This reminds me of the first day of school for younger kids. They are so excited and love when their teachers give them good praise and feel shame when they get in trouble. They start out small, doing only what they can, until they get good at it, and then expand their knowledge. They love to have fun with their friends, and pretend to be older and they pretend to be older people they respect, just like Zitkala-Sa does with her mother. The small kids love to just run. Just be free. Sometimes they even play "shadow tag" which is exactly what Zitkala-Sa was doing. I think Zitkala-Sa in this chapter shows us how she is just like anyone else, and is just like the white children even though they didn't think that she was anything like them when they took her to be "civilized". Also, You could think of this chapter as when god was making humans. He had to make many attempts to get humans perfectly right. Zitkala-Sa had to make many attempts in order to decide that she was making too complex of a design.

When Zitkala-Sa was trying to catch her shadow it shows that was trying to be everything she could be. She is trying to be everything; she doesn't want to give a part of her up. She doesn't want anything to escape, and when she goes to the East, she looses "her freedom and overflowing spirits". I think Zitkala- Sa realizes even at a young age that she needs her spirit, which is represented by her shadow. I think you could actually call her shadow her spirit. (It symbolizes her spirit) It also seems, as through she wants to go through with everything she has started not give up on anything; she wants to be strong and quite successful.