Absolutely Autonomous Individual

The novel “Laughing Boy” is truly a work of art. Its characters are original and are very interesting. The character that interests me most is the character Slim Girl. In this author’s opinion she is the real main character of the novel, named after her lover. Slim Girl takes the character “Laughing Boy” into American society and uses him to help herself become reintroduced into Navajo society. And along the way shows the reader the intense conflict between cultures and genders. Slim Girl’s conflicts in the novel come from many angles and portray the beliefs of both cultures’ views on the opposite race of people. She represents the middle ground that exists between both cultures, but in the process she is destroyed and thus the idea of another possible way is destroyed. but Through her both cultures are represented in new light, she appreciates the American way of life in which the standard for beauty is far higher than that in Navajo cultures yet she detests Americans for their treatment of her. She dislikes the Navajo idea of manual labor destroying her beauty, and she also feels very welcome and at home in a typical American city. In not accepting any way of life holistically she develops her own way, and in developing her own way of life (and seeing as how she was universally rejected she had to do this alone) she is portrayed as a strong, working, independent, free thinking woman. This was also something revolutionary in the era of La Farge, the idea of a woman being so strong in mind and body, beautiful, and clever.

Issue involving ethnicity and nationality combined

Intermarriage between cultures

Navajo idea of marrying an American-

“She is bad. She lives down by the railroad. She is not of the People any more, she is American. She does bad things for the Americans. (La Farge 33).” Wounded Face spoke of Slim Girl very poorly. While he knows that she is not a woman of good moral standing, the line that surprises me most is the one that claims that she is American. She is bad because she is American. There is no intermarriage between Americans and Navajo. This is frowned upon. Slim Girl is seen as an American even though she still speaks Navajo and is of Navajo race. This is enough in the Navajo people to segregate Slim Girl. She was not raised in the typical Navajo way and thus she is considered an American. In every other way she is Navajo, yet they still reject her and treat her as almost hostile.

American idea of marrying a “Squaw”-

“Then I saw that I was going to have a child. The next time he came to town, I asked him to marry me quickly….He said to get out of his way, he couldn’t be bothered by a ‘Squaw’ (La Farge166).” This is the conflict between the man that impregnated Slim Girl and Slim Girl herself. The man wouldn’t marry Slim Girl because she was a “Squaw”, which was American slang for a Native American woman. No matter what happened he would not take her as his wife. Eventually she also told the preacher that cared for her, and they also kicked her out of the church and commanded her to leave. The idea of a Native American woman marrying an American man was viewed incredibly poorly, as the Americans clearly believed that they were superior to the Navajo.

Universally she was not accepted by either people. Americans rejected her for her race, and Navajo rejected her for her unorthodox upbringing. And in not being accepted into either culture, for very different reasons, she was not allowed to marry within either culture.

Gender-

“He took out his knife.

‘I shall try to make it not wiggle,’ he said.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Cut it off just by the hole; I can’t pull all that through your arm.’

‘It is a good arrow. Pull it through.’

There was never a woman like this one. (La Farge163)”

Slim Girl challenges roles of gender throughout the novel. It is my opinion that she is almost forced to because she is exiled from both cultures and her only option is to become her own person. She clearly has traits from both cultures. She weaves like a Navajo woman and has their sense of material wealth, yet she is not a fan of hard manual labor and she insists on retaining the American value of beauty. She has an affinity and knowledge of American culture and is very much at home within it. She frequently visits the town, not only to visit her lover, but to interact with the people that she has been around for her entire life. Her only knowledge of culture is from her experiences with Americans. So while she carries a deep hatred for the Americans, she can’t escape the fact that they are the only thing that she knows. Because of this conflict within her, she has had to become a very callous, independent individual. She suddenly can’t rely on either Navajo or American peoples, and for much of her life she had few if any friends. Slim Girl had to rely on herself and herself alone to make it in life. This has made her very quick witted, strong, and indomitable. These are traits that were normally reserved for men in that time and place. To show Slim Girl as a beautiful, independent woman challenges the American ideas of female subservience and the Navajo ideals of beauty and subservience.



Slim Girl is a woman that has an agenda, she knows exactly what she wants and is steadfast enough to obtain it. The story was forced to end because she simply couldn’t choose one path, which in the end was the Navajo path. Slim Girl lived on the boundary between American and Navajo. She had tried both paths and failed at both, the idea that Laughing Boy could her reintegrate her into Navajo culture was a wonderful idea but in the end was unrealistic as she had adopted far too many American cultural values to be fully enamored with Navajo ways.
-- RS


LaFarge, Oliver. Laughing Boy. New York, New York: Signet Classics, 1957. Print.