Heard The Owl Call My Name - Essay Example

Heard The Owl Call My NameI Heard the Owl Call My Name tells us a story of a city dweller who experiences life in the village just as he was about to die. Mark Vicar was not told about his condition so that it will not impede in his understanding of life, which was the main point why he was being sent to the Kingcome village. The story gives us great lessons about life, and death.Mark Vicar is a dying man, but he did not exactly know about it. This is a very important point that latched the story to the concept of life and death.

Mark finds himself encountering death on his stay with the Kwakiutl people. The event of deaths allows him to see fully the life the villagers are living. The deaths he encounters actually symbolize his journey towards his own death and towards the acceptance of villagers to include him as a member. The first death he encounters was that of a young boy. The boy died even before he arrived. This shows his separation from the villagers. In every death he encounters, he becomes closer to them as he learns to understand and love their rituals, their practices and their beliefs.

The last death he encounters before his own was that of Keetah’s sister. With her death, he begins to gain acceptance from the villagers because he begins to share sentiments and emotions that they feel. Before his death, he hears the owl call his name, and this symbolizes how he became one with the villagers. He is not a stranger anymore rather a member of the tribe. The turn of events indicates that Mark Vicar needed to be sent to the village to understand life so he can accept death. He may not have fully known he was sick but since he was encountering different kinds of death within the village, not just physical death but also the death of the tribe’s customs and traditions, he begins to accept that the journey of life to death signifies that you have done what you have to do, like how Mark and Marta interpret the death of the salmons.

One’s concept and perception of things varies because of the personal experiences we have that differ from one another. Essentially, this is the main reason people from the village see things differently from those who live outside of their world. The people in the village have a different perception of the village compared to that of the modern concept because of their non-exposure to the things that make up the modern world, like technology and its workspace. The environment of the villagers is also significantly different than that of the modern world, limiting their perspective to what they have.

In addition, since the modern world is not in sync, or even in touch with the villagers’ perspective, they do not view the village they way the rest of the world does. They only see the village in such a limited concept that they overlook what the village really is.The concept of a village by the villagers includes everything that affects their life. The trees, as well as the animals, are the source of their food. The animals are also their pets. They use the water in the river for drinking, washing clothes, taking a bath and much more.

The weather is an important part of their life as their hunting and gathering days are based on the weather and the season. In addition, with the inclusion of all of these, we can see that the village for the Kwakiutis is more in tune with the concept of a family. Everyone is connected, everything is connected. This is very unlikely of a modern concept of a village, wherein people living in close proximity with each other do not know anything about each other. Also, the fact that the Kingcome villagers have a symbiotic relationship with their environment, their natural and social environment, influences their definition of a village.

Unlike in the modern society, where there are no conceived relationships with their neighbors and their surroundings. As such, the modern society views family different from the villagers, with it being more isolated and compact than the villagers, which happens to include almost everyone within the village. There is almost no concept of neighbor, only of family.