56 pages • 1 hour read
Annette Saunooke ClapsaddleEven As We Breathe
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Cowney Sequoyah Jr.
Cowney is a 19-year-old orphan who was raised by his paternal grandmother, Lishie, and his father’s brother, Bud. A member of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians, he has lived exclusively on their reservation in Cherokee, North Carolina. Born with a left foot turned to the outside, Cowney is ineligible for the wartime military, in which most of the young men his age serve. Cowney yearns to escape Cherokee, where there are few opportunities available to him. His one outward venture—attending a nearby junior college— ended unsuccessfully. In support of more opportunity, his grandmother garners applications for two colleges favorable to Indigenous American students. Cowney’s summer job at the Grove Park Inn is a means to provide funds for him to attend college in the fall.
Cowney’s parents both died while he was an infant, leaving him an orphan raised by relatives. Cowney’s grandmother is his stern but compassionate force of moral goodness and Christian faith. She compels him to take her to church, teaches him how to cook, and chides him when he becomes moody and uncommunicative. Cowney loves her deeply. Cowney’s uncle serves as the constant thorn in his side, always demanding work from him while never complimenting or even thanking him for his effort. The third intensely important relationship he develops during the narrative is with Essie, a distant relative who travels with him to work at the Grove Park Inn, and with whom he falls deeply in love.
At the beginning of the novel, Cowney constantly second-guesses his abilities, his motives, and his potential. While his work ethic and its results are exemplary, he assumes that all authority figures disapprove of him. When he receives compliments, affection, or assistance from others, it surprises him. Cowney is a private person, but over the course of the narrative, he learns how to develop deeper bonds with others and gains more confidence. As time passes, he learns how to defy Bud’s authority and to cope with disappointment and heartbreak after discovering Essie’s relationship with Andrea. He also wins the respect and support of his boss, Lee. While he is not a religious person, he gradually develops a profound appreciation of the spirituality of the earth and his place in its eternal cycles, thereby allowing himself to reconnect more fully with his heritage.
Essie Stamper
Essie, like Cowney, is a 19-year-old member of the Eastern Band who yearns to find more opportunity beyond what the reservation offers her. Embittered by her parents’ failed relationship, Essie believes that matrimony is primarily a vehicle for transportation off of the reservation. While she thinks she would be a good, serviceable wife to the right man, she does not expect true love to be part of the equation. Thus, Essie compartmentalizes her life: She seeks to protect those she loves while pursuing the opportunity to escape her circumstances and heritage.
Essie loves the arts, in particular ballet. She is an extremely intelligent, resourceful, articulate individual who periodically surprises Cowney with her observations. Essie is not afraid to try new things, even risking her job and relationships to experience new adventures. Cowney observes that, from her childhood, Essie has been a graceful, beautiful girl. Like Cowney, she yearns for the serenity found at the waterfall in the deep woods, implying that Essie has deep bonds with her native earth.
Essie is Cowney’s love interest, though Clapsaddle makes it clear that their love goes beyond physical attraction. In the final chapter, as Cowney reflects on their reunions over the years, he implies that their relationship became physical at times. The author is careful to say that the intimacy they share exceeds sexuality and is spiritual: At the novel’s end, Essie plans to unite with Cowney in death to become one with the earth, their Cherokee heritage, and the future.
Bud
Bud is a World War I veteran who, along with his brother, Cowney Sr., volunteered to serve in the US Army. They were in France near the end of the war when Cowney Sr. died by suicide. Bud came home soon after his brother’s body returned. Though he claims to be war-wounded, Cowney says there is no evidence of that.
Since his sister-in-law, August, died soon after giving birth to Cowney Jr. and Cowney Sr. died by suicide, Bud stepped in to become a father figure to his nephew. However, Bud is something of an antagonist instead of a nurturing presence: He baits, cajoles, and criticizes his nephew constantly. In addition to his perpetually negative attitude, Bud enters into a series of questionable or outright illegal activities that he uses to make money: secretly harvesting logs, shooting animals as they escape the forest fire, and trying to sell black bear gallbladders to foreign nationals. He justifies his cynical attitude by pointing out the shortcomings and failures of others, such as that white people have persecuted Cherokees unjustly for 200 years, or that his mother treated his brother differently.
Clapsaddle uses the problematic relationship of Bud and Cowney to establish a major point of conflict and personal growth for Cowney. Cowney discovers there is a good chance that Bud is actually his father, causing him to reassess what Bud has meant to him as his uncle lies close to death. Cowney shares some of his uncle’s characteristics, particularly resilience in the face of persecution and loyalty to loved ones. Unlike Bud, however, Cowney learns how to grow in a more positive and life-affirming way, allowing him to stand in even greater contrast to Bud by the novel’s end.
Lishie
Lishie is not the actual name of Cowney’s grandmother. Clapsaddle does not give her name in English or Cherokee. Rather “lishie” is the Cherokee word for maternal grandmother. Cowney explains that his father’s mother adopted the title Lishie because she was more of a mother than a mother-in-law to August.
Lishie lives with Cowney in a cabin. She makes magnificent quilts and cooks wonderful food. She shares her life fully with church friends who admire and adore her. Despite the losses she endured as a widow, such as raising an orphaned child and tolerating a bitter, war-scarred son, Lishie never ceases to be optimistic and faithful.
Lishie serves as a buffer between the uncle and nephew. Lishie is the source of all that Cowney knows about his parents, though she cannot fully tell the stories of their deaths without breaking down emotionally. Lishie knows when her death approaches but does not share this with Cowney. Rather, she solicits admission forms from colleges, encourages him to work to save up a year’s tuition, and pushes him to venture into the world. She is also a catalyst for Cowney’s reconnection with certain aspects of his heritage, as he learns how to take refuge in nature after her passing.
