Carol Dell'Amico teaches English at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, where she is currently working on a dissertation. This essay explores imagery in Silko's short story, such as the use of the color red and the motif of landscape losing its boundaries.

The most pervasive motif in Leslie Marmon Silko's "Storyteller" is that of landscape losing its boundaries. A "motif" is the reoccurrence of a literary device (for example, an image, symbol, or scene), not necessarily to achieve precisely the same effect or meaning each time. For example, landscape losing its boundaries in "Storyteller" is first alluded to in the first paragraph of the story: "She told herself it wasn't a good sign for the sky to be indistinguishable from the river ice. . . .The tundra rose up behind the river but all the boundaries between the river and hills and sky were lost in the...