Contrast to Show Understanding in Sherman Alexie's "Class" Essay

Paul Newman once said, “People stay married because they want to, not because the doors are locked” (74). There is no such thing as the perfect relationship, however, being involved in a healthy relationship is essential for a person to feel valued, safe, and happy. Unfortunately, in the situation of Kelly Sundberg’s personal essay “It Will Look Like a Sunset,” and Kate Chopin’s short story “The Story of An Hour,” include extreme examples of unhealthy relationships. The essay “It Will Look Like a Sunset,” shares painful experiences of Sundberg’s physical and emotional abusive relationship with her husband Caleb, while “The Story of an Hour,” shares a rare reaction of a married woman, Louise Mallard, who explores her emotions cautiously when hearing about the death of her husband. Each woman faces their own prison created by their husbands. The two marriages represent the figurative meaning of doors being locked in a marriage. Both pieces of literature convey the theme of confinement by using the literary devices of foreshadowing, imagery, and conflict.

Purpose: Alexie highlights how he ultimately overcame the hardships suffered during his early years due to his Indian ethnicity and displays how Native Americans were, and continue, to suffer from discrimination.

Sherman Alexie, in “Indian Education” tells his experiences in school on the reservation. Some of his teachers did not treat him very good and did not try to understand him. In his ninth grade year he collapsed. A teacher assumed that he had been drinking just because he was Native American. The teacher said, “What’s that boy been drinking? I know all about these Indian kids. They start drinking real young.” Sherman Alexie didn’t listen to the negatives in school. He persevered and became valedictorian of his school.

Danny faces complications trying to find his own identity. He is unsure of who he really is because he views himself through other people’s eyes. For instance, Danny tends to always explain how others identify him, “I'm a white boy among Mexicans, and a Mexican among white boys” (Peña 90). This is a problem because he does not have confidence in himself and with who he is. He feels the need to be accepted by others in order to accept himself. “Nobody paid him any attention anyway because he was Mexican. He roamed the school halls with his head down like a ghost. Drifted in and out of classrooms without a peep. Nobody even saw him as a real person. But down here, where everybody's skin is dark, everybody seems to be coming at him.” (Peña 16). This shows the amount of attention and care Danny gives into what others see him as and how they might feel about his race. Another conflict he encounters with his identity is not being a part of his father’s roots.

Adjusting to another culture is a difficult concept, especially for children in their school classrooms. In Sherman Alexie’s, “Indian Education,” he discusses the different stages of a Native Americans childhood compared to his white counterparts. He is describing the schooling of a child, Victor, in an American Indian reservation, grade by grade. He uses a few different examples of satire and irony, in which could be viewed in completely different ways, expressing different feelings to the reader. Racism and bullying are both present throughout this essay between Indians and Americans. The Indian Americans have the stereotype of being unsuccessful and always being those that are left behind. Through Alexie’s negativity and humor in his

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 “Indian Education” by Sherman Alexie the theme that is represented in each grade is racism. Throughout Alexie’s life he experiences more and more accounts of racism in school. Also, Alexie experiences levels of hardship as he gets older. Thus, the story’s theme statement could be summarized that racism enables hardship in one's life.

Victor Joseph’s portrayal of the classic Native American man is exemplified by Alexie’s use of dialogue, costumes, and flashbacks. For example, when Victor sees Thomas smiling as they ride their way to Arizona he says, “Indians ain’t supposed to smile like that. Get stoic” (Smoke Signals). This example of dialogue reveals how Victor believes a Native American man should present himself traditionally, which strongly contrasts with Thomas’s demeanor and appearance. Victor continues on, saying, “Look at your hair, it’s all braided up and stuff. You gotta free it. An Indian man ain’t nothing without his hair.” (Smoke Signals). Hair design is used to symbolize Victor’s close ties with his ancestral past as a Native American. Additionally, Victor’s comment on hair foreshadows when Victor himself cuts his hair, symbolizing a moment in which Victor embraces his traumatic past by accepting who he is as a person. In a more literal sense, flashbacks are also used to symbolize the trauma that Victor experienced in his direct past - living with an alcoholic father, Arnold Joseph, who abandoned him. However, by the end of the movie, Victor embraces this past through the spreading of his father’s ashes.

In Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Junior is a young American Indian that is shy and has low self-esteem, and has a few issues physically and his surroundings. He has a best friend named Rowdy. Rowdy is rude and has no emotion to any situation. What many people at the reservation don’t know is that Rowdy and Junior have real problems at home with their parents. The differences between Rowdy and Junior are the family and the personalities.

This short story clearly shows how different people live and struggle in the society. Human beings are always in a dilemma of making decisions. The story tries to demonstrate the struggle between the rich and the poor in the community. Faulkner has structured the story in a way that it depicts the emotional despair of both the protagonist and antagonist. What the story entails is a complete comparison of different societies from diverse life angles.

Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark” examine the complex relationship between a husband and wife. The two works take two different approaches to convey the same message: Marriage is not a fairytale, it requires sacrifice and unselfish behavior in order to work. Relationships are difficult to begin and harder to maintain. Mr. and Mrs. Mallard and Aylmer and Georgiana are two relationships that shatter the surreal perception of marriage and expose readers to the raw truth, marriage is not a fairytale.

Throughout literature many pieces of work can be compared and contrasted to each other. In “Superman and Me,” Sherman Alexie discusses the challenges he faced as a young Indian adult, who found his passion of reading at an early age, living on the Spokane Indian Reservation. He challenged the stereotype of the young Indian students who were thought to be uneducated while living on a reservation. Likewise, in the excerpt from The Hunger of Memory, Richard Rodriguez shares his similar experience of being a minority and trying to break stereotypes of appearing uneducated. He shares the details of his life growing up learning a different culture and the struggles he faced becoming assimilated into American culture. In these two specific pieces of literature discuss the importance of breaking stereotypes of social and educational American standards and have similar occupational goals; on the other hand the two authors share their different family relationships.

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.

This draws a connection to the erasure of Native American culture in history, they are seen as rare and different from the ordinary, and for some people their existence is completely forgotten or denied. His own comments of not belonging at a white school, because of his nationality and family history further show the division of race that he can see at Reardan. Junior’s cursing accentuates how frustrated and pathetic he feels, viewed as less than everyone at his school, and constantly rejected and isolated by his white peers. The negative, demeaning mindset of those white kids is that Native Americans do not deserve anything from white people, not their time, attention, care, or even a proficient education. According to Jens Manuel Krogstad at Pew Research Center, Native Americans have the second highest high school dropout rate- eleven percent. This is very high, especially when compared to the white or Asian dropout rates- five and three percent, respectively. Additionally, it says Native Americans have the second lowest percentage of bachelor’s degrees, only seventeen percent, compared to the two highest, white and Asian, at thirty three and fifty percent (Krogstad). Many Native Americans today are not allowed a chance at education because of poverty at reservations, and lousy, penniless schools. These issues are not thought about or spoken of often, because they are simply not