Who Mourns for Methuselah?: Death and Rebirth in "Power" by Linda Hogan

December 21, 2018

Linda Hogan’s choice to name the old Spanish tree ‘Methuselah’ encourages a reading of Power in which the hurricane acts as a biblical flood, uprooting the colonial world and its legacy of sin to bring about new life for the Taiga people. Biblical dating and etymology inform a symbolic framework for analysing the text, one in which Ama and Omishto each assume the role of a native Noah, navigating nature’s wrath and judgement.

By calling her tree Methuselah, Hogan reinforces the negative connotations inherent in the tree itself as a remnant of the colonial era. As Omishto says, it was planted by the Spanish – its “tangled dark roots hanging on five hundred years or so” – and in this sense acts as a living monument to all the time passed since the colonisers arrived and forced their values, languages and religions upon the Taiga people. The character of Methuselah, who lived to become the oldest known figure in the Bible (dying at the ripe age of 969), thus embodies the same sense of permanence, of refusing to let go (Missler 1). This is also seen in the tree’s nature as an invasive species, an ever-present reminder of the dislocation of plants, animals and people which has come to characterise America and the global world: “[The tree] is not from this continent … no one can figure out how it took hold in the shallow soil of this place” (Hogan 6). By this Omishto means that Methuselah does not belong in the ground of their home; the tree is foreign, alien to the very place it is trying to lay down roots, just the same as those who planted it. The fact that the tree has taken on a Judeo-Christian name despite being planted on (or near) Taiga land is a testament to how normalized these foreign ‘roots’ have become, how deep they have grown: they are “gnarled like hands grasping mightily at something, like old, old hands, hanging onto the earth” (30). The tree is personified. It refuses to let go of its prize even in its age and decay. We see this tension in the etymology of the word itself: Methuselah can be translated numerous ways, but the most common interpretation suggests it stems from the Hebrew root-word muth, meaning death; and shalach, to bring (Missler 1) This possibly means that he brings death with him wherever he goes (which in Hogan’s novel would be appropriate given the negative connotations of the tree), but it could also mean his death shall bring, suggesting that his death will bring about more death, that it marks some deadly event. As it so happens, in the chronology of the bible Methuselah dies the same year as the great flood from Genesis (Missler 1). It is curious, then, that Hogan’s Methuselah dies in the same manner: the hurricane and resulting flood tear its roots from the ground. There are other long-lived figures in literature, outside the Christian context, but still Hogan picks Methuselah. The suggests that the violent storm which opens the novel should be viewed through a biblical lens; that Nature brings the flood for the same reasons it was necessary in Genesis.

Viewed this way, the storm acts as divine intervention. It washes away the old world and all its sin in order to create a new one, leaving Ama and Omishto as survivors. This is first seen in that the storm is personified in the same way as the tree: it has an independent will, and like the Old Testament God, enjoys dolling out judgements. Omishto repeats “this storm, this storm,” as if to defamiliarize and foreground it as a tangible force. Like God, it “has no apology” to offer – its decisions are final and infallible (Hogan 33). After it finally fades away, Omishto personifies it yet again: “the roaring voice of the storm has spoken, passed judgement” (33). The storm issues its edicts from the sky; like the Old Testament God, He is distant and unknowable, a force of nature beyond anyone’s comprehension. The fact that Ama and Omishto survive suggests it was by divine will and the grace of God. This is seen when Omishto shouts “God!” for help, “calling out to what has never heard [her] before,” and immediately “Methuselah falls” (37). The sentence is long – fifty-four words – and nearly half are shoved into the clause following “falls,” as if Omishto is breathless watching this symbol of colonialism “taken down now as if it were nothing, as if it had never been anything that counted” (37-8). As Methuselah is defined by the passage of time, famed for its age, the use of “counted” here seems intentional. In death, the tree has been denied its being. It is no longer a thing that counts (by rings) the years of European dominion over America: it has been swallowed by the flood. The text suggests this is not mere accident, but again – divine intervention – as the next time Omishto sees the downed tree, she hears in her mind “the sucking sounds of roots tugged out of earth by invisible hands” (49). This is an allusion to Hogan’s earlier line describing Methuselah’s roots, how they were like “gnarled … old hands, hanging onto the earth” (30). The similar construction denotes the change in power­ between the two scenes; the spectre of colonialism, which once seemed untouchable and unforgettable, is literally ripped from the ground by the hand of a higher power. This is the purpose of the biblical flood, to sweep away the vestiges of a world judged unsalvageable for its crimes. Omishto even says as much: she looks at the bulldozers “clearing trees that fell in the storm,” and immediately intuits the power of the force that felled them: “I feel better seeing how small we are … [I] think that all our crimes against the world will be undone in just one rage of wind or flood” (99-100). Here, Hogan makes an explicit connection between falling trees and the crimes of the world; between divine judgement and a flood to execute it. Omishto recognizes this because she has already seen it happen once.

The last significant object of the flood narrative is of course the ark that carries the righteous few through the storm; in Power, this is Ama’s dying home. Hogan establishes this connection by positioning it in relation to Methuselah, to illustrate their differences. This is first done geographically: “Near Ama’s house, I can just see … Methuselah,” Omishto says, and then a paragraph later reiterates that “back in from Methuselah is the house of Ama Eaton” (6). These are the first few mentions of Ama’s home, yet Hogan does not place them on their own. The house and the tree are forced to share the same sentences and can only be defined in terms of their distance to one another. On a textual level, they orbit each other; they are foils. Whereas Methuselah tethers itself deep within the soil, Ama’s house “sits on cider blocks in case of flooding,” as though she has some premonition that soon she will be facing god (the Christian God through the flood, the Panther in its aftermath); where Methuselah’s roots go down into the earth, Ama’s “vines of morning glory” crawl up through her cinderblocks, “hanging on for dear life with their little grasping tendrils” (7). The earth reaches back. Snakes and bugs and plants all try to get inside her little ark, while life flocks to her yard – horses, deer. Like Noah, the ark defines her. In the way that Methuselah’s being is tied to counting, so is Ama tied to her home. For example, her hair “looks like it is part of the dying house,” and her body is described as “only carved wood,” the very substance the dying shack is made of (37). However, there is an important distinction to be made: while Ama’s house entertains animals, this is not why the ark exists. The house is instead preserving itself and what it represents. In a novel that takes as its subject the slow death of a nation and their culture, the house reminds Omishto of a lost time; the “faint kerosene light” in the window makes her think that “Ama, like the rivers, dropped out of time and that the towns of houses and suburbs have not crept forward, draining the swamps … trying to make our world run … until its gone altogether” (8). This is why Omishto’s mother claims that the house “wants to die” – because, to her, it represents a dying culture she wants to forget (26). The fact that the house survives the flood at all, as if a miracle, suggests the possibility of rebirth.

This possibility is realised in the text subtly, but unmistakably: in the aftermath of Methuselah’s death, the embodiment of sin and colonial conquest, the world exists for a while in a state of divine bliss. This is seen first in the Edenic qualities the swamp takes on in the wake of the flood. First, Omishto finds herself in a state of stunned unknowing, unable to “say what [she] think[s] or know[s],” or tell right from wrong in Ama’s killing of the panther, similar to the state of Adam and Eve before original sin, not knowing good from evil (42); naturally, she is also “naked as the day [she] first entered this world,” and goes without realising it for some time, unconscious of herself and her body (41). In her experience of the flood, which came to eliminate Methuselah’s sin, she is somehow cleansed of her own. It is rebirth in every sense of the word, suggesting that in the moment when she cried to God, and Methuselah fell, she gave herself over to a force greater than her own. This closeness to the primeval human state, and God with it, is likewise literally reflected in the floodwaters: the roads become “reflected sky,” water “silver and glassy” (46). Hogan’s specific use of the word “glassy” to reflect the sky and therefore the heavens seems to evoke I Corinthians 13, a common biblical image representing one’s attempt to see and understand the true nature of the divine. In this moment, Omishto embodies an Edenic state of being thought impossible for any living human, and thus when she looks into the glassy water it is not dim and obscure, but clear: “Heaven has fallen,” she says, existing for a brief moment on Earth (46).

The possibility of new life is also seen in that Omishto and Ama carve out a place for themselves directly in the absence of Methuselah; its passing lends them a newfound wisdom and strength. In Ama’s case, it is possible that her experience of the flood, and the felled Methuselah, is what influences her makes the resolution to kill the panther. Hogan writes that Ama “looks into the distance,” into the bush, “as if she looks for something, something out past the downed, old tree” (43). While Hogan does not say it is Methusala explicitly, it is the only tree whose identity is wrapped up in its age, representing the supposed permanence of colonial dominance. By looking for the panther – or at least some sign – with proof of the weakness of the white world in full-view, it suggests a possible reversal. Killing the panther is an act committed for the tribe – to prevent them from seeing the creature in its sickness, so that they keep faith and stay strong. In the absence of Methuselah, the elder-presence of the past, Ama makes a motion towards the future, to face the panther – the panther who is the “elder” of their clan (15). In Omishto’s case, she finds the strength to follow Ama, fulfilling the role of “[Ama’s] shadow, rooted tighter than Methuselah was to earth” (52). By tethering herself in the tree’s place, she effectively supplants the coloniser’s role; it is now she who “roots” herself to earth. The flood has brought about the possibility for a total inversion of power, to the point where she finds herself stronger than the storm that took Methuselah, saying: “It would take more than wind to whip me free” (52). In placing herself above God, or at least Oni, the wind, she shows the fearless determination of Ama. She is no longer merely Ama’s friend, but her “shadow,” literally foreshadowing the person Omishto may grow to become.

Ultimately, by viewing this Native American novel through a Christian lens – focalised through the obscure but nevertheless fascinating character of Methuselah – one gains a more nuanced understanding of the text and the religious and cultural tensions at its heart. While its characters are largely native, and deal with indigenous issues, the reality of the Western world and the predominance of European culture and values means that these stories are a part of native lives, too. Regardless of belief, they have a power to tell us about the world, and about ourselves.

Works Cited

Hogan, Linda. Power. W.W. Norton, 1999. Print.

Missler, Chuck. “Meanings of The Names in Genesis 5.” Koinonia House, 1 Aug. 2000,

www.khouse.org/articles/2000/284/.