SOURCE: "Ruth Benedict: Apollonian and Dionysian," The University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol. XVIII, No. 3, April, 1949, pp. 241-53.

Barnouw is an American anthropologist and fiction writer. In the following essay, he provides an analysis of the underlying principles of Patterns of Culture.

"The Chippewa can not kill thefatherr' Ruth Benedict exclaimed to me one day, looking up gravely from my much blue-pencilled thesis and emphasizing each word separately. "They can not kill the father! Contrast with Eskimo!" My adviser turned her meditative eyes upon me and inquired, "Can't you fit that in somewhere?" As often happened, I felt that I almost saw her point, but not quite. However, I jotted a hurried note—"Chips don't kill father.… Esk.(?)"—and said that I would have to think about it.

Like most of Ruth Benedict's students, I looked up to her with a mixture of veneration and bewilderment. With her silvery...