36 pages • 1 hour read
Joy HarjoCrazy Brave: A Memoir
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Spiritual Realm
Drawing from Native American spiritual belief, Harjo writes often of the spiritual realm. She even remembers her time in the spiritual realm before birth and being reluctant to leave. Only the music and art of the world attract her to earth to be born. She uses the spiritual realm as a recurring motif to tell stories of events in which she was not directly involved. For example, she tells the story of how her mother and father met at a dance hall by describing her vision of the event from the spiritual realm before she was born.
She also describes the spiritual realm as mystery, while the world is the story. When she is born, she takes her place in the story. Thus the world is given some singular importance, as the story is told here. The spiritual realm also acts as a protector to Harjo, providing her with insight into other people’s motivations or experiences that help her understand them and avoid confrontation. The spiritual old man who takes her to a stone quarry on the moon is described as her guardian.
The spiritual realm also acts as a conduit for Harjo’s creativity and imagination. Throughout the narrative, she has elaborate dreams and visions of other people and places and imagines herself in their place. In one instance, she dreams of an alligator that pulls her under the water, where she becomes an alligator, and her polio is cured. In another, she envisions herself as a Pacific Islander shaman whose song and dance healing teaches her to heal herself in the real world.
The Knowing
The knowing is Harjo’s term for her internal feeling of warning. It acts as a symbol for her spirituality, particularly during periods when her spirituality is otherwise suppressed. When she is a child living with her stepfather, her spiritual connection is all but diminished and emerges only in moments when her knowing alerts her to coming danger. The knowing warns her of danger when she walks with a boy who then attempts to rape her. It also occasionally warns her when her stepfather returns home. She does not always listen to her knowing, however, as she becomes more disconnected from her spiritual side throughout the middle of the book.
Narratively, the knowing serves as a recurring motif to inform the reader that Harjo’s spirituality and creativity are still alive and have not been completely lost. It acts as a reminder of her bravery, which she does not even know she has. When her knowing asserts itself, Harjo does not realize in those moments that this sense is her spiritual side manifesting to protect her, but this is clear to the reader, as the knowing essentially replaces the spiritual journeys and visions of her childhood. This dynamic is most clearly established in Part 2, where the knowing appears just as her spiritual voyages from Part 1 disappear.
Directions
In North and Central American Indigenous cultures, the four directions are fundamental religious and spiritual symbols. Each direction has its own color and its own nature. Harjo employs the four directions as a motif that appears in the epigraph of each of the four parts of the story. In the epigraphs, she describes what each respective direction symbolizes in her culture. She then uses these directions to symbolize the narrative stage of each part of the memoir.
In Part 1, the east is described as the direction of beginnings, and in this part of the story Harjo recounts her physical, spiritual, and artistic beginnings as well as the beginnings of her parents’ life stories. In Part 2, the north is the direction of difficult lessons and is “sharp and bare” (55). Likewise, Harjo undergoes difficult lessons and hardship while living with her stepfather, and when she goes to IAIA, she must learn to behave responsibly to avoid returning to her stepfather’s house. Part 3 is defined by the west, which is the direction of endings, tests, and finding one’s way from being lost. This direction symbolizes her period of being spiritually lost while living with her husband and mother-in-law, when her dreams and ambitions have ceased. Part 4 is represented by the south, which represents release, creativity, and transformation. In this final part, Harjo finally begins to recover her creative and spiritual side, releases her fear, and transforms into a self-actualized poet.
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By Joy Harjo
