Smoke Dancing and Oral Tradition

The first reading for Smoke Dancing really surprised me. The story is interesting and intriguing. Oral tradition can be seen throughout the story as pieces of the characters’ lives is shared with other characters from other characters. The reader is being told these stories from the perspective of three of the characters so far, Fiction, Bud, and Mason. They are making the entire book appear as oral fiction because the story is coming from them in each chapter. We also see this going on with Fiction telling the reader more and more about Bert and how she was before she died. Another thing worth mentioning is the relationships between the characters. I am unsure how realistic these relationships are to a real reservation. It seems that in the book, everyone is somehow connected to everyone else. The character of Fiction appears alone but really she is pretty much the most connected to every other character in the book. Her character is complex and confusing. I don’t understand why she wouldn’t make her father take responsibility for beating her. I wish she would confront him in some way before the end of the book. Also, I don’t understand the significance of the character of Bert. She seems to have been housing them all but there just seems to be something still missing from the story about her thus far. She seems too important to just dissolve from the story after her death. I think her relationship to the other characters must be highly significant in some way but the author hasn’t quite revealed that to the reader yet.