The Business of Fancydancing

The Business of Fancydancing Analysis

Right away, the word Fancydancing is simply demanding analysis. The word is a combination of fancy and dancing, clearly, which invokes two ideas: performance and opulence. By alleging himself as a fancy person, Seymour poetically describes the way he is perceived by his former communities. He is the fancy one who escaped the trials of reservation life to go live it up in the big city. What does he do there? He is essentially a performer of his own self, because he is a poet. That is similar to dancing because it is a performance from one's own being.

The book exists along a political and traditional spectrum where Seymour gravitates toward the open-minded sexually liberated morality of New York City, but within the context of his family life, he is secretly plagued by shame. This novel shows him dealing with the shame he feels by overcoming aversion to it. He goes back home to the reservation and endures mistreatment and rejection for the purpose of remembering his own journey to peace. This helps him in the long run, but it is difficult to expose himself to the other side of the spectrum again.

There is an important cultural note worth observing: Because his tradition is tribal, the experience he undergoes is also a symbol for the zeitgeist's transfer from tribal identity in more rural communities to a more urban, individualistic sense of identity. For a reader who only sees reality through individualism, it might be difficult to empathize with the serious homework Seymour undertakes by facing the shame he feels. The shame tells him he is a traitor to his tribe by abandoning their expectations and traditions.

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