Mescalero Apache Metaphors, Time, and Culture Shock
Drawing on Claire R. Farrer's Thunder Rides a Black Horse, this paper examines the metaphors central to Mescalero Apache culture—particularly the circle as a symbol of life, nature, and time—and contrasts them with common American metaphors such as "time is money." The paper argues that metaphors both shape and reflect cultural worldviews, influencing attitudes toward aging, ancestry, and the passage of time. A personal reflection on culture shock experienced by a Korean student studying in America reinforces these ideas, illustrating how deeply embedded cultural assumptions become visible only when they are challenged by an unfamiliar environment.
- Mescalero Apache Metaphors and the Circle of Life: Apache cosmology, astronomy, and circular worldview
- Apache and American Views on Time and Aging: Contrasting attitudes toward aging and the past
- Cultural Metaphors as Guides to Behavior: How metaphors shape action and cultural values
- Culture Shock and the Limits of Familiarity: Korean student's experience adjusting to American culture
- Conclusion: Cultural familiarity requires more than shared language
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What makes this paper effective
- It grounds abstract claims about metaphor in a specific ethnographic source (Farrer's Thunder Rides a Black Horse), giving the argument scholarly credibility while remaining accessible.
- The contrast between Apache and American metaphors is concrete and well-chosen — examples like "time is money," "gone to seed," and generational advertising slogans make the cultural analysis vivid.
- The personal culture shock narrative in the second half strengthens the theoretical argument by grounding it in lived experience, demonstrating how cultural assumptions operate below conscious awareness.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses comparative cultural analysis effectively: rather than describing Apache metaphors in isolation, it consistently juxtaposes them with American equivalents. This contrastive method allows the author to show that metaphors are not neutral descriptions but active frameworks that shape behavior — a core claim in cognitive anthropology and linguistics.
Structure breakdown
The paper is organized in two thematic halves. The first addresses the assigned reading on Mescalero Apache metaphors, progressing from astronomical belief to circular time to contrasting American attitudes toward aging and the past. The second half responds to a separate prompt on culture shock, offering a first-person account that illustrates the same theme — that culture shapes perception in ways that are invisible until disrupted. The conclusion ties both halves together through the figure of the cultural "translator."
Mescalero Apache Metaphors and the Circle of Life
According to Claire R. Farrer's book Thunder Rides a Black Horse, the metaphors the Mescalero Apache people use to express what it is like to come of age as a young woman, to understand the heavens, and to mark the passage of time are critical to understanding their culture. The Apache believe that the voice of the creator of the universe is written on the sky, and that the truth of the world — and how all people should behave — is written in the stars. All people, therefore, should respect and learn from nature. This belief is demonstrated in the ritual marking of a girl's passage into womanhood, during which the whole tribe gathers outdoors to bear witness to the truth written on the sky. Astronomy dictates Apache life, belief, and action.
Metaphors do not merely express how we think about life; they also guide how we approach it. The Apache, for example, view life as a circle. Nature does not have an end point — it is constantly renewing itself. Because life is understood as a circle, there is great respect for elders in Apache culture, as youth, adulthood, and old age are all part of the same natural cycle of creation. A human life is a small reflection of the cycle of nature. Time is fluid; it cannot be easily measured or broken down into minutes or days, and the past and the present are always closely connected. This means that one's ancestors continue to influence one's daily life. The belief in circularity affects everything, even the way that circular baskets are woven.
Apache and American Views on Time and Aging
This positive view of nature and the life cycle is not reflected in American culture. When Americans say something has been ignored, they say it has "gone to seed" — that is, it has grown old and neglected, like an untended garden sprouting seeds. This reinforces the idea that something must have gone wrong if nature is allowed to take control. The notion that the aging of the human body is undesirable is reflected in such American compliments as "he doesn't look his age" or "she doesn't look a day over sixty." The idea that the pursuits of the old are less valuable than those of the young appears in American advertisements that promise viewers "this is not your father's car/truck/Jeep." In other words, children want to distinguish themselves from their parents, and older people want to appear young. Old age and youth are not seen as part of the same cycle of life; instead, everyone strives to remain young for as long as possible.
American phrases like "you can't change the past" and "what's past is past" would also be confusing to the Apache. Unlike the Apache, Americans conceive of time as a fixed line along which the past is always being left behind. The Apache, by contrast, believe one can understand the present because the past continues to shape it. Even when the past seems to have receded — like certain constellations that disappear for a season — it always returns. Everything moves in a cycle or a circle, as the sky itself serves as a metaphor for life. This stands in sharp contrast to the American metaphor "time is money," which implies that time is a finite resource that can be lost or spent.
Cultural Metaphors as Guides to Behavior
These contrasting metaphors reveal how deeply culture shapes perception and behavior. The Apache metaphor of the circle encourages reverence for elders, connection to ancestors, and attentiveness to the natural world. The American metaphor of time as money encourages efficiency, productivity, and a forward-looking orientation that treats the past as largely irrelevant. Neither set of metaphors is simply a neutral description of reality; each actively structures the values, habits, and social relationships of those who hold it. As cognitive linguists have argued, metaphors are not decorative figures of speech but fundamental frameworks through which human beings make sense of experience. Recognizing the metaphors embedded in one's own culture is therefore a first step toward genuine cross-cultural understanding.
Conclusion
Culture shock is the shock of being in a place that looks familiar — like a university, or a country you have studied before arriving — but that proves unfamiliar in its everyday customs and the ways people relate to one another. At least an anthropologist like Farrer, studying the Mescalero Apache, expected the culture to be very different from her own. Travelers to America do not always carry the same expectation, because American movies, music, and images are so widely circulated abroad. The experience of culture shock reveals that even someone who speaks English fluently still needs a kind of translator for American culture. Metaphors, whether the Apache circle or the American equation of time with money, are among the most powerful — and least visible — of those cultural codes.
Works Cited
Farrer, Claire R. Thunder Rides a Black Horse: Mescalero Apaches and the Mythic Present. Waveland Press, 1996.
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