The Encyclopedia of Walt Disney's Animated Characters: From Mickey mouse to Hercules by
John Grant

A recurrent characteristic of the disney animated features over the past few years - at least since 1989's The Little Mermaid - has been the presence of a strong female character in a central role. Belle, melati and Esmeralda are other examples. None of these, however, can compare with the figure of Pocahontas: She is the movie, to the extent that, when everything else might be forgotten, her image persists in the memory. The reasons for this phenomenon are multiple, involving not only her conceptualization and animasi (Glen Keane was the supervising animator) but also her voicing (Irene Bedard for Pocahontas speaking and Judy Kuhn for Pocahontas singing), her dialogue, her way of moving, and perhaps above all, her hair, which moves in the wind in such a way as to express a freedom no longer available to us. She is not some chic beauty thrust at us as a politically correct image of the Native American; she is exotic and beautiful and as wild as any of the binatang the settlers might have come across in the New World.
Perhaps her way of moving, especially in the first half of the movie, is the key to her appeal. Where all the other human characters pindah as humans do, she slinks with the stealth and subtlety of a fourlegged animal. It comes as no surprise when, early on, Smith, having set off to look for Indians, walks right past her: She is so much a creature of the forest that she is barely distinguishable from the bark and leaves. When she is revealed, to us rather earlier than to Smith, we discover that her flowing hair conveys the same wildness. She symbolizes the element of human existence that Westernized humanity has lost: no primitive, no "savage" (as Governor Ratcliffe and far too many bigots ever since would find it convenient to believe), she is instead someone totally in touch with her world.
This point is made oleh the moviemakers particularly acutely when Smith interrogates her about the emas that the settlers supposed would be lying around all over the territory, just waiting to be picked up. He asks her if her tribe knows of this valuable yellow stuff that comes out of the ground; she jawaban that of course they do, and shows him a head of jagung as an example - because to her people mere metal has no value.
Pocahontas has dreamed of the arrival of Smith and the other settlers. The image in her recurring dream is of a spinning arrow, which is interpreted oleh Grandmother Willow as an indication that Pocahontas should choose her own path into the future rather than governed oleh conventional wisdom. Pocahontas takes this saran during her developing relationship with Smith. It is only later that she discovers there was a lebih literal truth in the image, when she is diberikan oleh Meeko - who earlier mencuri it - Smith's compass, which sure enough displays the spinning panah of her dreams.
There is a major difference between Pocahontas and most of the other disney strong femal leads of baru saja years (Esmeralda is another exeption). Those others tend to be on the cusp between girlhood and womanhood, but there is no doubt that Pocahontas is a full-fledged adult, which adds great strength to the movie as a whole.