Black Elk Character Analysis

Black Elk is an Ogalala Lakota medicine man, spiritual leader, and the narrator of the Black Elk Speaks . He begins hearing voices when he is only four years old and he experiences his first great vision when he is nine, during a period when he is deathly ill. In this richly symbolic vision, Black Elk is transported to a cloud world where the Great Spirit shows him the dire future of starving, misery, and displacement that awaits his people before granting him the power necessary to rescue them and restore his nation’s “ sacred hoop .” As spiritually invigorating as this experience is, Black Elk’s vision quickly becomes the source of much anxiety and alienation. Black Elk is reluctant to talk to anybody in his tribe about his vision because he doesn’t think they will believe him, and this social isolation makes him feel like an outsider. After Black Elk assumes his role as a medicine man and gains the respect of his people, he feels mounting pressure to save his people and their culture and to fulfill the destiny presented in his vision. Despite Black Elk’s desire to rescue his people and restore their sacred hoop, his spiritual power proves to be no match for the malicious worldly forces that the Lakota are up against: over the course of Black Elk Speaks , his people are displaced, dehumanized, and killed by the growing Wasichu presence in their land, and Black Elk regards his inability to prevent and correct the Wasichus ’ acts of violence as a personal failure. Black Elk’s dedication to honor the higher purpose that his vision grants him makes him a humble character, though his attitude toward his people’s white oppressors is critical and bitter. He disdains the Wasichus ’ unending greed, and he justifies committing acts of violence and revenge against them on the basis that the Wasichus lie to his people and attack them without provocation. At the end of the narrative, Black Elk’s replaces his anger and bitterness for grief and resignation when he accepts that the “sacred tree” that represents his culture is dead, and that he has failed to protect his people.

Black Elk Quotes in Black Elk Speaks

The Black Elk Speaks quotes below are all either spoken by Black Elk or refer to Black Elk. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

It is the story of all life that is holy and good to tell, and of us two-leggeds sharing in it with the four-leggeds and the wings of the air and of green things; for these are children of one mother and their father is one Spirit.

But now that I see it all as from a lonely hilltop, I know it was the story of a mighty vision given to a man too weak to use it; of a holy tree that should have flourished in a people’s heart with flowers and singing birds, and now is withered; and of a people’s dream that died in bloody snow.

Once we were happy in our own country and we were seldom hungry, for then the two-leggeds and the four-leggeds lived together like relatives, and there was plenty for them and for us. But the Wasichus came, and they have made little islands for us and other little islands for the four-leggeds, and always these islands are becoming smaller, for around them surges the gnawing flood of the Wasichu; and it is dirty with lies and greed.

Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.

So I took the bright red stick and at the center of the nation’s hoop I thrust it in the earth. As it touched the earth it leaped mightily in my hand and was a waga chun, the rustling tree, very tall and full of leafy branches and of all birds singing. And beneath it all the animals were mingling with the people like relatives and making happy cries. The women raised their tremolo of joy, and the men shouted all together: “Here we shall raise our children and be as little chickens under the mother sheo’s wing.”

Then I was sitting up; and I was sad because my mother and my father didn’t seem to know I had been so far away.

The next morning all the swelling had left my face and legs and arms, and I felt well as ever; but everything around me seemed strange and as though it were far away. I remember that for twelve days after that I wanted to be alone, and it seemed I did not belong to my people. They were almost like strangers. I would be out alone away from the village and the other boys, and I would look around to the four quarters, thinking of my vision and wishing I could get back there again. I would go home to eat, but I could not make myself eat much; and my father and mother thought that I was sick yet; but I was not. I was only homesick for the place where I had been.