I am attempting to honestly share Black Elk's vision and story, John G. Neihardt modifies that story in order to embody Black Elk as the classical defeated hero. In transfiguring Black Elk into this image, Neihardt could not avoid the cultural "cues" which forced him to model Black Elk in the conventional image of the defeated hero as described in Bruce Rosenberg's Custer and the Epic of Defeat. By modifying the beginning and ending to Black Elk's story, Neihardt prepares and reinforces the reader's expectations of Black Elk's image as the classical defeated hero. Also, because Neihardt understands the central theme of Black Elk Speaks to be that of Black Elk's failure, it provides him with the incentive to modify Black Elk's vision to depict Black Elk as a classical hero. Finally, Neihardt transfigures Black Elk in order to reflect the contradictory paradigm of the Greek, Ranan, and Christian defeated hero. / Department of English