He looks, listens, remembers, and survives, which is his function. There's no stridency, no preaching, no deep-voiced narrators making sure we got the point of the last massacre. It is the very folksiness of Penn's film that makes it, finally, such a perceptive and important statement about Indians, the West, and the American dream. Detailed plot synopsis reviews of Little Big Man Jack Crabb (Hoffman) is a 106-year old white survivor of the Battle of Little Bighorn and who has lived in the American West. But the film's movement is circular, and so is its belief about Indians.Penn has adopted the yarn form for a reason. The yarn is the most flexible of story forms. The protagonists in the film are two ideas of civilization: the Indian's and the white man's. The movie starts with Jack in old age revealing his life story to an unconvinced historian (Hickey) remembering back to … Only Old Lodge Skins makes it through to the end not merely intact, but improved.His survival is reflected in the film's structure. Penn puts his near the center; it is Custer's massacre of an Indian village, and Little Big Man sees his Indian wife killed and his baby's head blown off. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. Hoffman, or Little Big Man, gets around pretty well. Jack Crabb, looking back from extreme old age, tells of his life being raised by Native Americans and fighting with General Custer.Jack Crabb is 121 years old as the film begins. Jack then renounces his Native American upbringing in order to save himself from being killed. He touches all the bases of the Western myth. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics. He doesn't capture the history of a time, but its flavor. The film is largely concerned with contrasting the lives of American pioneers and Native Americans throughout the progression of the boy's life. Jack is given the name "Little Big Man" because he's short but very brave. It stars Dustin Hoff… Little Big Man Summary. All the characters who appear in the early stages of the film come back in the later stages, fulfilled. It is about a white male child raised by the Cheyenne nation during the 19th century. All the events happened long, long ago, and they're related by a 121-year-old man who just wants to pass the story along. Most films, especially ones with violence, have their climax at the end. "Little Big Man" gives us the flavor of the Cheyenne nation before white men brought uncivilization to the West. Custer's civilization will eventually win, but Old Lodge Skins's will prevail. Its teller can pause to repeat a point; he can hurry ahead ten years; he can forget an entire epoch in remembering the legend of a single man. So he leaves the place of death and invites Little Big Man home to have something to eat. We're disposed to go along; all good storytellers tell stretchers once in a while, and circle back to be sure we got the good parts. A collector of oral histories asks him about his past. Custer fades from glory to madness. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Plot Summary of “Little Big Man” by Thomas Berger. He recounts being captured and raised by indians, becoming a gunslinger, marrying an indian, watching her killed by General George Armstrong Custer, and becoming a scout for him at Little Big Horn.121-year-old Jack Crabb recounts his life, from being captured by the Cheyenne at age 10, to being raised by them, to living with white folks again and ultimately to being present at Custer's Last Stand at Little Bighorn, with many adventures, interesting characters, life stages and tragedies in between. It mostly works. The preacher's wife returns as a prostitute. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.Arthur Penn's "Little Big Man" is an endlessly entertaining attempt to spin an epic in the form of a yarn. The medicine-quack, already lacking an arm, loses a leg (physician, heal thyself). He was brought West as a settler, raised as a Cheyenne, tried his hand at gunfighting and medicine shows, scouted for the cavalry, experimented with the hermit life, was married twice, survived Custer's Last Stand, and sat at the foot of an old man named Old Lodge Skins, who instructed him in the Cheyenne view of creation.Despite Old Lodge Skins, however, Little Big Man doesn't make it as an Indian, or as a white man, either, or as anything else he tries. Custer stages his bloody massacres and is massacred in turn, and we know that the Indians will eventually be destroyed as an organic community and shunted off to reservations. When it doesn't -- when there's a failure of tone or an overdrawn caricature -- it regroups cheerfully and plunges ahead. While broadly categorized as a western, or an epic, the film encompasses several literary/film genres, including comedy, drama and adventure. Penn can control violence as well as any American director (remember "But Custer stays dead, and Old Lodge Skins doesn't quite die ("I was afraid it would turn out this way").