A History of Violence in "There There"


Violence permeates the atmosphere of this novel. A dark sense of hopelessness prevails from the very first lines of the prologue mark this with the poem, “In the dark times / Will there also be singing? / Yes, there will also be singing. / About the dark times.” This poem is of two people speaking to one another. Maybe it is a child speaking to an adult, or a young person who has not yet experienced the ills of life. Whoever the person speaking might be in the first couplet, they show a kind of unknowingness and naivety, or hopefulness, of a better tomorrow. The hope might be that the singing is of better times, or times yet to come that will be better than what they are now. Yet the older, or more experienced, individual shows the first speaker of their lack of understanding by confirming that songs are sung, but that the songs are of their current situation. There is an acceptance of their current, “dark” situation that the second speaker has. It almost seems to be an apathy to it, as the current situation is seen as real and possibly never to be reversed.
It is understandable to see why the second speaker does not have hope for a “better time.” Promptly after this poem is written, the title of the next section is called, “Indian Head,” which is followed by the “five-hundred-year-old genocidal campaign (8)” that the author describes in great detail. Not only were detailed stories of the brutal and senseless murders of the native people’s documented, but also of the their systematic oppression by the English and US governments and their celebration over its “success.” Everything that native peoples knew and did was now influenced by this horrible history. This is shown through the first ever book published by a Native American, which was a retelling of the story of an old Native American who was beheaded and who’s body parts were sold and shown off to the public. As shown through the rest of the first half of this novel, this history of violence caused by the colonizer, their current oppressor, is now solidified in the culture. Drugs, violence, poverty, and so much else prevails as dominant parts of the society as so much hope as been lost, and now a new apathy and hopelessness has taken hold of the current social order.

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