The Indian Uprising by Donald Barthelme
"The Indian Uprising" by Donald Barthelme explores a complex narrative that juxtaposes a battle scene with a fragmented, introspective account of urban life. The story unfolds through the eyes of a narrator who is ostensibly a leader among city forces yet lacks traditional military acumen. Instead of a coherent tale, readers are presented with a collage of details that blend front-line updates, personal reflections on relationships, and unsettling portrayals of violence. The title alludes to the familiar motifs of American narratives surrounding Indian uprisings, yet Barthelme subverts these expectations by introducing unexpected twists, such as the narrator's complicity in acts of torture and his romantic entanglements, which add layers of irony.
The backdrop reflects an urban setting rife with material abundance and social disparity, suggesting a broader commentary on contemporary American life. Characters, including the narrator's love interests, are depicted in ways that challenge traditional romantic and heroic ideals. Ultimately, the narrative culminates in a reversal that questions the nature of love, identity, and societal values, leaving readers to grapple with the dissonance between personal aspirations and collective realities. This work invites contemplation of the chaotic interplay between individual desires and the tumult of societal upheaval.
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The Indian Uprising by Donald Barthelme
First published: 1968
Type of plot: Parody
Time of work: The early twentieth century
Locale: "The city"
Principal Characters:
unnamed narrator , the protagonistSylvia , his sometime companionMiss R. , an "unorthodox" teacherA Comanche brave , a torture victim
The Story
Donald Barthelme constructs "The Indian Uprising" as a battle-scene progress report. However, the narrator, clearly one of the leaders of the city forces, shows none of the tactical or organizational skills of a military officer, and his fragmented account mixes very detailed front-line news, sentimental love talk, asides directed at persons about whom the reader knows nothing, information on torture methods, and so forth. There is no story here in the conventional sense, but rather a collage of smug observations leading to a surprising reversal in the final paragraph.
The title suggests that the subject at hand is the familiar material of countless American stories: Narratives of Indian uprisings have been best-sellers in the New World since the last part of the seventeenth century, and Hollywood has made countless cinematic versions by adding the complications of romantic love to the dangers of the fight. In the first paragraph, Barthelme echoes much of that mythology by implying that the city is a kind of El Dorado, with yellow-brick streets, that its main thoroughfares are named after military heroes, and that an anguished, morally aware couple will add a sophisticated philosophical inquiry on what makes "a good life."
The coherence is soon upset. Sylvia proves at least part of the time to be fighting on the Indians' side, and the narrator himself takes part in the torture session. However, through the accumulation of detail the story creates a collage of images, and through this collage the reader comes to know not so much the individuals' motivations and fates as the general social reality.
First, there is city life itself. The scene could be any American metropolis, with its ghetto, heterogeneous population, and incredible accumulation of material goods. The list of objects piled in the barricade does much to describe an entire culture. The narrator, clearly well-off financially, defends the status quo in every sense and conveys the smugness of his urban class by his surprise that the ghetto dwellers join the insurgents, by his long list of live-in girlfriends (each of whom he has given a table made from a hollow-core door), by his preoccupation during the Uprising with his latest door project, his latest girlfriend (presumably a film star), and his personal development under the teacher Miss R. He is culturally sophisticated yet blind to the implications of the chaos around him and within him.
Second, the narrative plays with the conventional idea of the "initiation story." The narrator admits early (echoing the dying words of Montaigne), "I decided I knew nothing." His friends direct him to Miss R., who sets out to teach him the truth, "the litany," "the hard, brown, nutlike word." He fails to recognize the danger of her dress "containing a red figure," and she makes his initiation an ironic one when at the end she represents the Indians' Clemency Committee, which arrests him and presumably will torture him in turn.
Finally, the promise of a love story is withdrawn during the chaos of the narrative. Sylvia turns out to be the narrator's enemy (many of the city "girls" find the Comanches attractive, it seems), no hint is ever given about his relationship with Jane, nor is much revealed about the female "you" of whom he speaks longingly several times. The most humorous mislead is the narrator's connection with Miss R., who at times seems madly romantic, calling him "my boy, mon cher, my heart." In this regard, her final demand that he strip makes wonderful irony of the whole theme of romance.
Bibliography
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Klinkowitz, Jerome. Donald Barthelme: An Exhibition. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991.
McCaffery, Larry. The Metafictional Muse: The Works of Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, and William H. Gass. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982.
Molesworth, Charles. Donald Barthelme's Fiction: The Ironist Saved from Drowning. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1982.
Olsen, Lance, ed. Review of Contemporary Fiction 11 (Summer, 1991).
Patteson, Richard F., ed. Critical Essays on Donald Barthelme. New York: G. K. Hall, 1992.
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Stengel, Wayne B. The Shape of Art in the Short Stories of Donald Barthelme. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985.
Trachtenberg, Stanley. Understanding Donald Barthelme. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990.
Waxman, Robert. "Apollo and Dionysus: Donald Barthelme's Dance of Life." Studies in Short Fiction 33 (Spring, 1996): 229-243.