Yellow Woman

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1974

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Background

Story Analysis

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

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Literary Devices

Story Within a Story

Also known as a frame story or an embedded narrative, a story-within-a-story is a literary device in which a central narrative contains one or more smaller, related narratives that usually unify or reflect back on the central narrative. Stories within a story can occur when a character within a story becomes the narrator of another story within it. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, for instance, the play-within-a-play is specifically crafted to mirror what Hamlet believes is happening and elicit a response from his uncle the king. Similarly, in “Yellow Woman,” Silko uses references and retellings of the Yellow Woman story to reflect the confusion in the narrator’s identity, as well as to incorporate elements of Indigenous American tradition and storytelling practices into the story itself.

Silko participates in the cultural act of storytelling. It is common in Indigenous cultures to take a base story and embellish it, adding contemporary details to make it more relevant to the audience. This is largely because Indigenous American stories are a means of cultural and moral education, and it is imperative to keep those stories interesting to a younger generation. The retellings and recurrent references to Yellow Woman both in the narrator’s name and in her discussion of the story connects the stories to modern concerns of agency, identity, and consent.

Ambiguity

Ambiguity is a literary device in which a situation or idea is uncertain and could have multiple interpretations. There is significant ambiguity from the first moment of “Yellow Woman.” The primary moments of ambiguity are related to consent, identity, and realism. The narrator’s identity is ambiguous—Silva insists she is Yellow Woman, but the narrator herself resists that identity, knowing that she has an identity beyond Yellow Woman. The situation itself is ambiguous; she may have been kidnapped by Silva, as she decides to tell her family, or she may have sought out this encounter and willingly engaged in it. Silva’s identity is likewise vague; he might be a Navajo man living in the mountains, or he might be the spirit of the mountain and forest. The ambiguity is never fully resolved, as the narrator chooses to return home but also chooses to believe she may meet Silva and reinhabit the persona of Yellow Woman again someday.

Diction

Diction is an author’s choice of words. Especially in short stories, every word is carefully chosen for a specific effect. In a narrative otherwise written in English, Silko uses the Indigenous American word ka’tsina several times, calling attention to the linguistic clash of cultures. The narrator says that “the ka’tsina spirit and Yellow Woman can’t mean us” (Paragraph 17), and then clarifies that a ka’tsina is a spirit from the north. This is the only definition given. The fact that this word is not fully defined further enriches the ambiguity of the situation and Silva’s identity. It also ties the narrator more strongly to her Pueblo heritage, since she doesn’t feel the need to explain this word in more detail and uses it as effortlessly as any word in English.

Natural Imagery

Imagery is an effective technique in writing, and many writers employ it for different reasons. Drawing on the senses, imagery evokes settings, adds definition to characters, and allows readers to feel, smell, taste, see, and hear what is happening in a work of literature. Silko’s prevalent descriptions of the natural world as the story progresses, especially images of natural boundaries like the river and the mountains, highlight the narrator’s conflict regarding connection with and alienation from her culture. The pace of the narrative slows as the narrator describes her surroundings—the types of trees, the feel of the sand, the drying effect of the sun, the warmth of the horse—because she finds peace and beauty in these natural scenes. Yet, there is inherent conflict in these images. Like Silva, the natural world is both seductive and potentially dangerous.