Preview of The Surrounded Summary:

The themes of this novel derive from social issues, but they also transcend them.

The issues surrounding the themes of cultural identity and recognition are quite similar to those involved in the other terrible ethnic conflicts of the twentieth century in the Middle East, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, and the tribal strife in Central Africa and Northern Ireland. The necessity facing Native Americans—as it is for all ethnic and cultural groups that must share the same space—is assimilation without extermination. Thus, McNickle's novel explores the great themes of alienation, cultural and individual identity, family and community, reconciliation and sacrifice, activity and passivity, abandonment, acceptance and belonging, catastrophe, chaos, order, conscience and redemption, the clash of cultures, death and dying and the various customs and traditions surrounding death, and discrimination based on ethnicity. McNickle develops these themes by focusing on the family of...