Death, Isolation, and Loss Throughout the Novel ‘The Removed’

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The Emphasis on Death, Isolation, and Loss throughout the Novel, ‘The Removed’
Death
The author describes how a police officer shot Ray-Ray Echota, son of Maria and Ernest. On September 6, Ray-Ray was riding his motorcycle to a mall in Tulsa when he got into an altercation with two other people. An unknown person fired a gun, and a police officer instinctively thought Ray-Ray, an Indian, had fired the weapon. The police officer suddenly shot Ray-Ray in the chest, killing him. Systemic discrimination against minor racial groups, including American Indians, is common in the U.S. (Bachman, Alexander, and Craig). After an investigation, the police department discovered that a white kid had fired the gun. The police officer involved did not face trial as the police department justified his act, therefore dismissing the case.
Before Ray-Ray died, a family of deer appeared downhill near a water point. Since then, the deer never returned to that water point, making Sonja, his sister, sad. Ray-Ray reassured her that they would return, but they never did. Sonja thought someone shot them down and took them away in a truck. As she talked about how she missed the deer, her mother imagined their bodies hanging and blood dripping from the dead animals.
Dragging Canoe told Tsala the story of a boy with prophetic visions. The boy went out to hunt one day as his father was sick. He saw a doe and shot it down. He ran to the doe, and it was covered in blue leaves when he got there. One flittering leaf stood out, and the boy bent to pick it. The leaf had writings instructing the boy to warn people of invaders (Hobson 42). He dragged the doe by its legs in anger, then slipped and fell. As he lay down unconsciously, he envisioned people walking through the snow. People began to die and fall in the rain, leaving the infants and children crying. In his vision, he saw more soldiers with oxcarts and wagons, and the dust around them formed a snake image.
When he awoke from his dream, the doe beside him was still alive. Its eyes were large, brown, and watery. The doe instructed him to return home and inform people of his visions. He would warn people about the approaching soldiers, the lurking suffering, and death. The doe stopped breathing with its eyes still wide open. Beside it was a fluttering blue leaf with a message for the boy. He was going to die soon, just like the doe. He cried as he lay beside the doe until he could not cry anymore. Then he fell into a deep slumber that lasted two days. He found the doe was gone, and the boy returned home to warn the people. The villagers wondered how they would get the information to the people who lived by the river, as a snake lived in the water. Those who went fishing would never return, and their bodies would later float by the river banks. The villagers believed that the red snake in the water attacked humans, killed them, and ate their faces. The boy gathered courage and went down by the river to convey his message. When he got to the river, the snake carried him away, never to be seen again.
Everyone looked dead when Edgar was on the train from Albuquerque, but he knew they were sleeping. As he sat on the train, trying to catch some...