Initial Response To"The Man To Send Rain Clouds".
In the short story "The Man To Send Rain Clouds" written by Leslie Marmon Silko, it explains what happens when a family member passes while he is taking care of the sheep. There are many things the family members do before they get to bury their family member. Most of the rituals in the story seem to be possibly Indian rituals. They were hard to relate to because that is not what the living family members do "normally" when their family members die. The happenings in this story were a little confusing, until I thought about them being religious rituals.
In the beginning of the story Leon and Ken whom found their grandfather, Teofilo dead at the sheep camp, they tie a gray feather in his hair and made paint marks on his face. After they do that they say, "Send us rain clouds, grandfather."(pg1150) When I first read this I didn't understand. When I thought about how Indian people paint their bodies for heritage or religious reasons I thought about it all making sense.
In the beginning of the story they tie Teofilo up in a red blankets. At first I did not think that much about it but the red blanket kept coming up in the story. In the second scene the narrator does not say that they brought him in the house to change is clothing, but they make it a point to say they bought in the "red blanket", in which he was wrapped up. In scene three they talk of how his moccasins were hidden under the red blanket. And it seem that the statement came out of nowhere. And in scene four the priest thinks about how Teofilo is under the "red blanket." There seems to be significance to the red blanket, because it is brought up often. At the beginning of the story it didn't confuse me but I thought it must have a meaning if it keeps getting brought up, which confused me.
When them men drive by the priest, I wondered why they just didn't tell the priest then at the end of the story they decide to.