Literary Rendition of Genocide in Cherokee Fiction

Abstract

This dissertation entitled “Literary Rendition of Genocide in Cherokee Fiction” is an exploration ofthe ways the two novels--Pushing the BearandMountainWindsong--delineatethe harrowing experiences of the Cherokee removal processcarried outin the second quarter of the nineteenth centurywas the result of both thefederal government's obligation inthe face of Georgia's claim over the Cherokee landas a matter of their sovereignty and the colonial mentality of the settlers of theEuropean origin. This incident known asthe Trail of Tearsin American history isinfamous for the violence, brutality, death, andcolossalsuffering ofgenocidal nature.Looking at the nature and gravity of the crimes committed inthe process,thedissertation uses the concept of genocide as propounded by Raphael Lemkin and laterendorsed and expanded by the UN Convention of 1948 as well as other genocidescholars whotake genocide asthedeliberate and systematicviolence is perpetrated ona group of people primarily on the basis of their collective identity.Moreover, theconcept of genocide is further discussed along themodernity-of-genocide thesis ofZygmunt Bauman thatgenocide is the by-product of the larger process of modernityand its components like nationalism, racism, bureaucratic rationalism, settlercolonialism and its cohortsand thecriticismof thisthesis. In addition, a philosophicalperspective on genocide that it is an evil act of atrocious nature embedded in the verynature of human being has provided a different point of view.With these concepts,the dissertation explores the representation of the genocidal acts of brutality, death,and inhuman suffering perpetrated on the Cherokees while being forcefully removedto the west of the Mississippi. By portraying such acts of cruelty and atrocity,Pushingthe BearandMountainWindsonghave not only represented their traumatic past andforegrounded the evils from the victims’point of view but they have once againbroken the silence about what these texts see as Native American holocaust.