Dances with Wolves door Michael Blake

A. General information:

1. Dances with wolves, first published in 1988. It’s a penguin edition and the number of pages is 313.

2. I couldn’t find any information about Micheal Blake on the internet.

3. The story takes place in America in the prairie. Lieutenant Dunbar lives in Fort Sedgewick in a area where the Comanches live, a group of Indians. The story is set in 1863.

4. Lieutenant Dunbar is send to Fort Sedgewick to help the team that is working there. But the team who was patrolling there was already left when he came. So he’s all alone with his horse Cisco and an old wolf who keeps company. But things happen and slowly he’s getting in contact with the Comanches and finally he becomes one of them.

5. Lieutenant Dunbar or also ‘Dances With Wolves’: He’s a pretty and brave young man. He’s smart and funny. But he’s alone with his soul mate, the horse Cisco. First he believes that the men who had abandoned the fort would come back, but after a while he didn’t believe it anymore and enjoys the aloneness. He’s very impulsive, doing things and after that feel sorry about it. When he founds the wounded Comanche woman, Stands With A Fist, he feels no fear and brings her back to the camp. After that deed he is closer than ever to the friendship with the Indians.

Kicking Bird: Kicking Bird is also a very important person in the story. He’s the one who saw Lieutenant Dunbar first and is also the one who visit him after bringing back the woman. He\'s the medicine-man of the Comanches and is very important in the camp. With his calm character he get a lot respect.

6. The theme of the book is being part of something. Dunbar first want to be part of the nature, but then he’s getting part of the Comanches and then he is even part of a relationship with Stands With A Fist.

B. Personal opinion:

1. I liked two characters of the book most; Lieutenant Dunbar and Kicking Bird. They appealed me because they are ‘real’ persons with a high level of intelligence that they are using very well. Dunbar is self-assured and he loves it to be alone in the free nature. I can really understand his feelings and I think I had done the same things. Kicking Bird is also someone you can understand because the story is also written from his point of view. It’s just a wonderful man, who is getting so much respect and uses his intelligence so well that I really admire him.

2. There where not many characters that I disliked. In fact, only a few that are just unimportant for the story, like Timmons and Major Fambough. They play a small role in the beginning of the story, and I disliked them because of the description Dunbar gave. They stunk and weren’t very nice.

3. There isn’t much humour in the book. It’s a sad and very interesting story but there is barely no humour in it.

4. The feelings that the book arouse in me are very differently. In some way it’s making me very sad, because you know that this special ‘wild’ race is already disrupted by the white, highly developed people. They don’t have their own land anymore and it’s a shame. But this book made me also very interested in the habitant of the Indians. The story is so beautiful that you can’t stop reading and you forget all the things that happen around you. It would be impossible to give a full account of all my impressions of the Comanche camp. I should be writing forever were in that case. This is a part of the reports that Lieutenant Dunbar wrote while staying in the fort. When he wrote this, he had just visited the Comanches for the first time. It’s such a nice part, because it says everything. He had seen so many things that you just can’t explain it, you just have to see it yourself.

5. My favourite part was when Dunbar brought the wounded Stands With A Fist back to the camp. The atmosphere in that part was so good descried that you could almost just feel it and see it.

6. There are many things I’ve learnt like the habitats of the Indians. I think that I can better understand things that are going about those people. First, I hadn’t a single image of the living a the thought of them. But now I’ve seen a little bit more and it’s very interesting. I also think that it’s such a shame that the Indians can’t have their own land and habitant anymore. They are living now in special area\'s. It’s just unbelievable.

C. The summary

Lieutenant Dunbar is send to Fort Sedgewick to help the group that is already there. But the circumstances are very touch so the group has left the fort. When Dunbar arrives in the outlying, abandoned fort, he wants to stay there, he thinks he has to, because it’s his duty. The only man who knew that Dunbar was send to fort Sedgewick, was the man who drove him to the fort. But on his way back, he has been killed by some Indians. Now Dunbar is all alone, but he likes it. Little by little he is becoming one with the prairie and the wonderful nature around him. All the things he does, he writes in a sort of diary. But he also misses some company. He and his special horse Cisco are all alone. And of course the old wolf that comes now and then. Dunbar called him Two Socks because he has two white socks on his front legs. The wolf comes regularly by and eats the things that Dunbar offers him.

Suddenly he catches a sight of an Indian who is trying to get into the corral where Cisco is standing. When he sees Dunbar, he is frightened, jumps on his small horse and rides away. It’s a Comanche Indian and the camp where they live is near by the fort. Kicking Bird is his name and he is the medicine man in the camp, a very respected person. He tells the happening in the camp, and some boys tried to steal the horse again. But Cisco was too smart and turned back to Dunbar.

When Dunbar wants to go and find the Indian camp, he sees a young women who is very wounded. It’s an Indian women, Stands With a Fist. He brought her back to the camp.

Kicking Bird was intrigued with this strange man and goes with Wind In His Hair to the fort. They drink coffee together with Dunbar and try to communicate with signs.

Little by little, Dunbar gets his own place in the camp. Stands With a Fist is recovered again, and when Dunbar ‘discovers’ that she’s white, they are trying to talk. After months of practising he can speak Comanche very good.

In the main time Kicking Bird and some other warriors are going to fight with enemies, far way from the camp. Dunbar, now Dances With Wolves, can not go with them, because he is not experienced enough. When the warriors are already a few weeks gone, the Comanche camp is getting attacked by the hated Pawnee Indians.

Dances With Wolves and three other men get some guns from the fort, and thanks to that and the strategy of Dances With Wolves, they won the fight without losing any Comanche men.

From that moment Dances With Wolves is really accepted. And when he and Stands With a Fist are falling in love and getting married, he is luckier than ever.

When they are moving to the winter camp, Dances With Wolves realises that he has been stupid. He has left his diary in the fort! All the people would know what had happened with him and the Comanches! He drove back to the fort, but there were already new soldiers. Cisco was shot and Dances With Wolves was detain.

When some warriors helped him escape, Dances With Wolves was sure that the white men would search him and that he would bring the Comanches in great danger. So he wanted to go away and hide together with his wife.

But the people in the camp would not let him leave, so he was going with them and was very relieved.