The story of Black Elk as fiction and biography. „Black Elk speaks“ by John G. Neihardt versus “The heartsong of Charging Elk” by James Welch

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: keine, University of Rostock, course: Imaginary Homelands - Indians, 6 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: In this paper I am going to compare the biography “Black Elk speaks” written by John G. Neihardt with the novel “The heartsong of Charging Elk” written by James Welch. Both books show a different perspective on the same topic. “Black Elk speaks” shows the true history whereas the novel from James Welch is fiction. But by reading both books I got the impression that even “The heartsong of Charging Elk” could have really happened. By reading the books a lot of connections or links get obvious. The paper tries to discuss some of the connections. In the first part of the paper the stories will be summarized and the main characters Black Elk and Charging Elk will be described. In the center part of the paper some of the connections and links will be compared more detailed. Here I will triy to point out especially the connections they have during their travel to Europe. In the last part I am going to discuss the interesting changes of the narrative perspective and the resulting impression for the reader.