Have You Ever Sat Somewhere And Wondered Why An Author

Most of Alexie’s writing reflects life on the reservations today. The poverty, oppression, commodity food, and alcoholism are the main themes in his stories. The title story of his collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven, however, deals with the life of an Indian man who has left the reservation to live in Seattle and some of the obstacles he faces in the white world. We never know the main character’s name, probably because he feels like a nameless nobody in this strange world. He is alienated and told that he doesn’t belong even

Throughout “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” the theme of resilience is deliberately presented. Native Americans past and present continue to face stifling issues such as racism, alcoholism, isolation and suicide. Sherman Alexie makes it his obligation in his stories and poems to show Native American resiliency through humor. By using his characters to show resiliency through humor Alexie presents humor as an integral part of Native American survival.

In Sherman Alexie’s short story “Superman and Me,” Alexie writes about his life as an Indian child growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in the state of Washington. He depicts his life from when he was three years old, living on the reservation, up to his current self, as an adult writer who frequently visits that reservation. He primarily describes his interest in reading and how it has changed his life for the better.

In a Bill Moyer’s interview “Sherman Alexie on Living Outside Borders”, Moyer’s interviews Native American author and poet Sherman Alexie. In the Moyer’s and Company interview, Alexie shares his story about the struggles that he endured during his time on a Native American reservation located at Wellpinit, Washington. During the interview, Alexie goes in-depth about his conflicts that plagued the reservation. In an award-winning book by Sherman Alexie called “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, Alexie writes semi-autobiography that reveals his harsh life on the reservation through a fictional character named Arnold Spirit Junior. In Alexie’s semi-autobiography, Alexie shares his struggles of a poor and alcoholic family, the

Authors write for many reasons; most often because they want to tell a story. This is definitely the case with Sherman Alexie, “a poet, fiction writer, and filmmaker known for witty and frank explorations of the lives of contemporary Native Americans.” He grew up on the Spokane and Coeur D’Alene Indian Reservations, and has devoted much of his adult life to telling stories of his life there. Alexie expertly uses language and rhetorical devices to convey the intensity and value of his experiences.

Growing up as a Native American boy on a reservation, Sherman Alexie was not expected to succeed outside of his reservation home. The expectations for Native American children were not very high, but Alexie burst out of the stereotype and expectations put by white men. Young Native Americans were not expected to overcome their stereotypes and were forced to succumb to low levels of reading and writing “he was expected to fail in a non-Indian world” (Alexie 3), but Alexie was born with a passion for reading and writing, so much so that he taught himself to read at age three by simply looking at images in Marvel comics and piecing the words and pictures together. No young Native American had made it out of his reservation to become a successful writer like he did. This fabricates a clear ethos for Alexie, he is a perfect underdog in an imperfect world.

Not many writers can pull off a collection of interconnected short stories the way Sherman Alexie does. With his 1993 publication, The Lone Ranger and the Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Alexie won the PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction for his rich portrayal of Native American life on the Spokane Indian Reservation (). As a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian himself, Alexie describes the collection as thinly veiled memoir in the tenth anniversary edition, yet by employing a variety of skilled writing techniques, he connects readers of all backgrounds to the events and characters in the stories (). To do this, Alexie plays with narrative perspective, magical imagery, and non-linear storytelling with various tones to

Sherman Alexie's book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven was written using a multitude of literary devices to explain what it is like to be a native American. The novel Alexie has written is a combination of vignettes to show the life of Native American people through symbolism and other literary devices. In the vignette “The Fun House” Alexie uses various symbols to present and describe things in this vignette. It is in this vignette where Alexie brings the creek into the book. Alexie uses the Tshimakain creek as a symbol to express that you need to look within yourself to find the strength to change.

The three stories “A Drug Called Tradition,” “What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona, and “The Trial of Thomas Builds-the-Fire” in a book of short story collection called: “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,” published in 1993 and reissued in 2005, by Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/ Coeur d’Alene Indian. Those three short stories introduce us readers to Thomas Builds-The-Fire, a character who tells too much stories. Through analyzing Thomas Builds-The-Fire’s stories, we will understand why his community treats him like an outcast. The story about three proud Indian boys: It is night time, they aren’t doing drugs. Instead, they drink Diet Pepsi, and strangely, “They are wearing only loincloths and braids” even though they’re sipping on the Pepsis in the twentieth century. Because, as Thomas suggests, they “have decided to be real Indians tonight”, “they all want to have their vision…receive their true name,” and they want to “breath in that sweet smoke” (20) from the fire they built. The word “sweet smoke” gives us readers a sense of release and relief of their suppressed feelings coming from the longing to reconnect to their roots. Later, the boys become non-alcoholic, and in a matter of seconds, “Thomas throws away the beer,” “Junior throws his whiskey through a window,” and “Victor spills his vodka” (21). At the end of this story, “the boys sing. They sing and dance and drum. They steal horses” (21), thus become heroes, proud Indian heroes. Story of Thomas and

Sherman J. Alexie, is a short story written in the first person focusing on two Native American Men who grew up together on a Reservation for Native Americans but have been estranged from each other since they were teenagers. Victor who is the narrator of this story is a young man who lost faith in his culture and its traditions, while Thomas our second main character is a deeply rooted traditional storyteller. In the beginning of the story Victor, our Native American narrator learns the death of his father. Jobless and penniless, his only wish is to go to Phoenix, Arizona and bring back his father’s ashes and belongings to the reservation in Spokane. The death of Victor’s father leads him and Thomas to a journey filled with childhood

In “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” written by Sherman Alexie, he talks about his struggle in society of being Indian. Alexie shows his struggle through his telling of personal experiences in life. In his late night trip to 7-11, he has a strange encounter with the 7-11 employee because the employee is suspicious of him just because he is Indian. “‘I was hoping you weren’t crazy, you were scaring me,”’ said the 7-11 employee. He proves his point by giving quotes of his conversation, but even though Alexie was not being suspicious, he gets eyed down as if he was just because of his race. Another way Alexie was racially abused was when he was driving around at night because him and his girlfriend got in a fight. “‘Well you

The Indians are finally presented in the movie by the screen scanning across a wide-open desert very peaceful and deserted. In the middle of all this silence the camera fell upon a skeleton of a human that we assume the Indians killed. This is how the movie sets the tone for how we are going to think about the Indians. They play with the stereotype that all us Americans think are true about the Indians. At first we think that we were right, but the story does not end there.

In Sherman Alexie’s novel The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven shows the struggles of daily Native American life, which is shown through the point of view of male character. All though out the book the following three questions appear: ‘What does it mean to live as an Indian in this time? What does it mean to be an Indian man? and What does it mean to live on an Indian reservation?’ Alexie uses literary devices such as point of view, imagery, characterization to make his point that the conflict of being an Indian in the U.S. in these short stories using the following short stories “An Indian Education” and “Amusement”. “An Indian Education” uses both imagery and characterization to show us what the narrator is

Sherman Alexie’s “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” is a short story about the modern day Native American. The speaker of the story welcomes the reader to the setting of the story, a 7-11. In this 7-11 the graveyard manager is skeptical about the speaker thinking that he is an armed robber and what not because of his tan skin and long ponytail. The speaker understands why the cashier may feel threatened because he himself was one a 7-11 graveyard shift employee. The speaker has a white girlfriend who he fights with quite often and she accuses him of being an alcoholic, eventually leaves his life with her in Seattle, Washington to go back to his reservation where his family is. He often has vivid dreams of Native Americans and white fighting on a battlefield until it takes a sick twist and the white are playing polo with an Indian woman’s head. The speaker is often stopped by the police for wandering in neighborhoods that the majority of the population is white. Him being different makes white people nervous and on edge. The speaker talks about how he was supposed to be different and that he had potential compared to your average Native American” (Alexie 386). The speaker was in college from a couple years and eventually dropped out and ends up a couch potato flipping through the television stations like the way society

The main point of the film is to illustrate the impact of racism on a global scale, both in the past and in the present. The film shows how racist ideas and practices began to evolve from the start, and how they developed over time.