Poverty Inside-in-Out of “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” Many underprivileged groups such as, African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, just to name a few, often struggle to flourish within society due to lack of resources and lose their identity in assumption of their “inadequacy”. Sherman Alexie, a Native American activist, reveals the effects of poverty through the life of Victor, a young Native American living in a reservation, in his short story, “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona”. Victor, right after he lost job, was notified about his father’s passing. Unable to have the sufficient funds to retrieve his father’s remains from Arizona, he travels alongside his former childhood friend, Tomas Builds-the-Fire. Their journey initially begins with a broken identity, but it brings awareness of how they were able to redefine whom they were despite of their critical situation. “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” depicts the harsh reality of the Native American’s poverty due to lack of resources, resulting in emotionally straining them and bringing social corrosion. Through Victor’s situation, Alexie presents how the lacks of resources worsen his emotional state. Victor’s emotional severity is projected from the very moment he lost his job and realized that his father’s death. Victor did not see his dad in several years, but spoke to him over the phone a couple times, however held a hereditary affliction that quickly will become
Braeden teased that these scenes will be emotional, as this will make Victor feel all alone similarly to how he felt when he “was left on the doorstep of an orphanage at the age of 7 by people who supposedly loved him”. Braeden went on to share how much similarities he and his character share. He lost his father at the tender age of 12 and the family he grew up in was destitute. Upon losing his father he made some life changes some he highlights resonates with his character’s sense of being alone.
Victor and Thomas had never been off the reservation before. They experienced what it’s really like to be a Native American in the real world. On the bus ride there, two white men took their seats and made rude comments about them being Native Americans. They received a lot of stares and uncomfortable looks from people as well. The bus ride to Phoenix was hard for Victor because he had to deal with Thomas talking the whole time. Victor especially didn’t like it when Thomas brought up his father in conversation.
Ethos, or argument by character is prevalent in this essay because of Sherman Alexie’s extreme credibility. Considering this essay is pieced together by different anecdotes, the author becomes more and more trustworthy as the story progresses. Sherman speaks of growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern
Alexie is showing how sorrowful and hurt he was when he had to face these situations. Growing up like this filled him completely with sadness. The circumstances of his family also fill him with sorrow. This is shown when the girls are throwing up in the bathroom and he is reminded of the sound from when his dad used to throw up from hangovers because he was an alcoholic. These memories fill Victor with sorrow.
Character is a key literacy device that is used in this short story. Alexia uses Thomas-Builds-the- Fire to develop the character of Victor. Both Thomas-Builds the Fire and Victor are important components to the story and its development. Victor and Thomas both grew up on the Indian reservation. Each character faced hardships throughout their childhood. Victors father left at an early age and Thomas’s mother died during childbirth .Thomas can relate to
Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer is filled with racism, stereotyping, anger, and hate. You can feel Alexie’s mood throughout the novel, and it’s easy for readers to see that Alexie is arguing through his fiction novel that there is systematic oppression against Native Americans. However, there is also an underlying argument trying to be made in Indian Killer other than the obvious. Sherman Alexie makes this argument through the characters of Aaron Rogers and Truck Schultz. The topic discussed is one that we see outside of the book in society during times of fear, distress, and tragedy. Indian Killer illustrates a situation uncertainty where individuals take advantage of the panic to push their own agenda on emotional and naïve audiences.
Education —an institution for success, opportunity, and progress — is itself steeped in racism. In Sherman Alexie’s short story “Indian Education” from his book The Longer Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is set in two places, the Spokane Indian Reservation and a farm town nearby the reservation. The story is written in a list of formative events chronologize Victor’s youth by depicting the most potent moment from each year he is in school. Alexie addresses the issue of racism in education by examining examples of injustice and discrimination over twelve years in a boy’s life. Victor faces his initial injustice in first grade when he is bullied by bigger kids, but his understanding of injustice becomes much more complex in grades two through twelve as he experiences discrimination against his American Indian identity. Familial experiences of a Native woman, Alexie’s style and humor, and Victor’s awareness of discrimination from grade one to twelve all reveal the grim reality of growing up and being schooled on an American Indian reservation.
In the short story This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona written by Alexie Sherman. Alexie wrote about these two Native Americans that live on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Victor had a tough childhood when his father left him around the age of seven and moved to Phoenix Arizona. Thomas’s parents died when he was just a baby and grew up with his grandmother, Thomas was a storyteller and got picked on a lot because of his story telling. Victor lost his job and he also found out that he lost his father due to a heart attack, Victor was told that his father had a savings account and if he wanted anything to go to Phoenix to go gather up his father’s belongings.
Have you ever been in a situation where you felt like you were the odd one out? In Sherman Alexie’s novel Indian Killer there are many references to the cultures and traditions of Indians and how they are different to others. Alexie also brings up some of the major points of being a true native American and how some are just “wannabes” as he calls them in the novel. He also goes in depth with some struggles of being an Indian and how life is different between Indians and whites. The culture of the Indians in this novel play a major role in the novel as it is how the Indian killer starts killing because of all the racism. Alexie uses many references to
This rhetorical analysis will bring you through the "How to Fight Monsters" chapter of Sherman Alexie 's story : An Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. This book is a semi-autobiography that won the 2007 U.S. National Book Award For Young People 's Literature. This story is about an Indian boy from a poor reservation with an alcoholic father, who wishes for a better life. In order to achieve this better life, Junior decides to move to another school in order to have " hope" for his future. During this transition into his new school Junior is marked as a traiter and looses the one close friend he had on the reservation. At the opening scene of the story Junior is asking his parents "who has the most hope?" In his desperate
Sherman Alexie paints the picture of reservation life by explaining the fact that Victor has no money, “who does have money on a reservation, except the cigarette and firework salespeople [Alexie, “Phoenix” 1]”. Most people living on reservations are not wealthy by any means, and living on a reservation has different laws and tax exemptions, so needing money is not as essential as it is to someone not living on a reservation. Knowing that Victor is living on a reservation with no money helps display the setting and tone of the story, which is crucial to understand the representation of reservation life Alexie is trying to portray. The beginning of the film Smoke Signals shows exactly how simple reservation life is and directly backs up the setting pictured in Alexie’s short story Phoenix. The lack of money extends all the way to the reservation itself, and is obvious when the council could only give Victor one hundred dollars to get to his father’s body, and tells
In the novel Reservation Blues, most of the characters struggle with their identity at some point. Victor has an especially strong urge to rebel against his Native American heritage, which is apparent in his violent, arrogant demeanor and his obvious problem with alcohol. Victor is tied to his past and has trouble coping with his life as it is, and is in a constant battle with himself, his surroundings, and other people.
No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” Unfortunately Native Americans have deep roots with racism and oppression during the last 500 years. “In The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven,” Sherman Alexie tries to show racism in many ways in multiple of his short stories. These stories, engage our history from a Native American viewpoint. Many Native Americans were brutally forced out of their homes and onto Reservations that lacked resources. Later, Indian children were taken from their families and placed into school that were designed to, “Kill the Indian, save the man.” In the book there are multiple short story that are pieces that form a larger puzzle that shows the struggles and their effects on Native Americans. Sherman Alexie shows the many sides of racism, unfair justice and extermination policies and how imagination is key for Native American survival.
Sherman Alexie may write boring and uninteresting characters, but the dreams in Reservation Blues are stellar. The dreams help the reader understand and connect what he is trying to write. With all the sentences in his book that say some version of “the horses screamed” and all the dreams about the cavalrymen killing horses and Indians, it is not hard to make the connections Alexie is trying to make. The horses are the Indians, and they are being killed by the white man. This also goes hand in hand with Alexie’s view of “nothing good happens on a reservation and life is just like the negative stereotypes.” The dreams he writes are mainly a snapshot of what he believes about the connection between reservation life and white America.
Native American authors often share common themes that stem from life on reservations; these include poverty, violence, abuse, and alcoholism. Sherman Alexie, a Native American from Spokane, Washington, is not only one of these authors, but she may be the most successful and well-known Native American writer who contributes these themes. Alexie often made strong attempts to portray life as a Native American in her short stories in novels. For her, it was about depicting the Native American experience. she does just that in her short story collection, “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.” Alexie uses literary elements, such as themes, symbolism, and imagery to further aid her overall message of what life is like growing up and living on a reservation. These experiences, as she demonstrates, contrast sharply with those of white society, as they cannot fathom a similar culture.