54 pages • 1 hour read
LeAnne HoweShell Shaker
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Shell Shaker
Shakbatina describes her ancestor Grandmother as the first Shell Shaker, symbolic of the Earth as a whole. When the people hear that they are about to be invaded by the Osano Hispano de Soto, Grandmother “strapped the empty shells of turtles around each ankle” and danced around the fire for four days and nights, moving her lips “in silent prayers” so that the children do not “hear sorrow in her voice” (loc 94). At the end of the fourth day, Grandmother’s “ankles were swollen and bloody where the shells and leather twine had cut into them” (loc 94). However, her prayers were answered: Miko Luak, the spirit of fire, “took pity on her” and “carried her prayers up to Itilauichi, the Autumnal Equinox” (loc 94) who promises to answer her prayers when she asks for his help. Indeed, when de Soto kills Tuscalusa and his men, Itilauichi transforms Grandmother and her sisters into birds, which fly to a new land, the birthplace and home of the Choctaw people.
Shakbatina is also a Shell Shaker, which has become synonymous with diplomacy and peacemaking. It also represents the respect the people have for the natural world and the gifts that it gives them. Tema notes that women “shake shells to reconnect with all living things” (loc 2936). However, in the novel, the Shell Shaker also symbolizes change: Grandmother’s dance leads to the people leaving their home and starting over somewhere else. Similarly, Shakbatina calls on the tradition of the Shell Shaker to convince the rest of the elders that she must sacrifice herself to protect her daughter. Furthermore, Auda has a vision of a Shell Shaker the morning that she kills Redford. Each time the Shell Shaker appears, the dancing woman foreshadows both positive and negative change.
The Porcupine
The porcupine is a recurrent motif throughout the story. Shakbatina receives a porcupine skin from Koi Chitto, fashions it into a sash, and decorates it with symbols denoting the origin story of the Choctaw. The porcupine spirit is so flattered by the beauty of the sash that it becomes the guardian spirit of Shakbatina and her descendants. When Shakbatina dies, Great Mother Porcupine leads her to the spirit land.
Porcupines can defend themselves easily against larger predators. However, Koi Chitto reminds Shakbatina, their ancestors believed the “porcupine was another symbol of the sun” because “in the moonlight the animal’s quills seemed to radiate light, a sign that one thing can hold the essence of another” (loc 283). This indicates that Big Mother Porcupine is a powerful protector but also symbolizes how the story is told overall: Many of the characters “hold the essence of another” as does the story itself, both a murder mystery and an exploration of Indigenous beliefs and history.
Nanih Waiya
Nanih Waiya is an ancient earth mound, dating back somewhere between 300 and 600 CE. At one time, a platform surrounded the mound, and evidence suggests people used it for religious rituals. According to Choctaw oral tradition, Nanih Waiya is the birthplace of the Choctaw, the way in which they arrived on earth. In a short story, “The Chaos of Angels,” available on Howe’s website, Howe describes this origin: “Choctaws crawled up through the mud of the Nanih Waiya, and into the sun's light. We washed ourselves off and combed our long hairs. Some of us lived like crayfish. Some of us lived like turtles. Some of us lived like raccoons. Some of us lived like coiled snakes end to end. Some of us lived like people. We danced, prayed, practiced our songs, learned to hunt, and grew the tall green corn that balanced our lives for 2,000 years before the whites forcibly removed us to Oklahoma.”
In Shell Shaker, Nanih Waiya symbolizes the origin of this sacred space, harmony, and balance. When Redford/Red Shoes’ spirit is confined to Nanih Waiya, all the conflict of the years is settled. Furthermore, this is where the Oklahoma Choctaw reunite and reconcile with the Mississippi Choctaw. This return to the beginning symbolizes a rebirth and rejuvenation of the Choctaw, only available when they recognize how divided they have become by the intervention and abuse of the white colonizers and their own internal conflicts.
James Joyce
In the novel, James Joyce is Redford’s contact with the Irish Republican Army. However, James Joyce is also a very well-known Irish author; some even consider him the greatest author of all time. To this day, the city of Dublin, Ireland, celebrates Joyce’s life and works every year on June 16. Joyce’s works are read, particularly his novel, Ulysses, the action of which takes place on June 16, 1904.
Joyce is recognized most often for his use of stream-of-consciousness narrative, which attempts to take the reader into the mind of the protagonist and replicate his thought patterns. This can often be difficult to read. In Shell Shaker, Howe pays homage to this through Adair’s reaction to Joyce: She cannot understand anything he says, and his words jumble together. She even tells him that she doesn’t want to hear any “more incoherent sentences,” that she “never could get through Finnegans Wake” (loc 3996), another one of Joyce’s well-known novels. However, Gore understands Joyce perfectly, by “[r]eading between the lines, understanding what is said and what is implied” (loc 4008).
Here, Joyce symbolizes the relationship between the Choctaw and the Irish. Not only did the Choctaw send financial support to the Irish during the Great Potato Famine, they also have other similarities, such as the ability to decipher complex language. As Delores notes, all Choctaw are “Code Talkers” (loc 2798) because one has “to understand a lot of codes to be Choctaw” (loc 2787). Howe argues, through the allusions to Joyce’s work and style, that the Choctaw are good at deciphering code internally and externally.
