Jackson Jackson the Generous Character in What You Pawn I Will Redeem by Tim O'Brien

Jackson Jackson is sent on a quest to retrieve his beloved grandmother’s regalia in the short story, “What You Pawn I Will Redeem”. Instead of just calling the police to get the stolen regalia back from the pawn shop owner, Jackson wants to earn the thousand dollars to buy back the lost heirloom. Along the way, he is met with a few road blocks that try to stray Jackson from his true goal. Sherman Alexie succeeds at humanizing a Native American character through the use of stereotypes, while showing his progression towards getting back his grandmother’s regalia.

First, The Spoils System shows that Jackson acted like a king. Spoils system- practice of dismissing government job holders affiliated with a defeated party and replace them with supporters of the winning party (Day 2-5 warm up slides). He replaced members with ones he liked. The members that got kicked out probably don't like Jackson. Basically, he replaced them with ones that wont say no to him. The definition to spoils system is the opposite of how Jackson interpreted it.

In Sherman Alexie’s novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” the narrator portrays both internal and external conflicts throughout his journey to success. Arnold Junior Spirit is a fourteen-year-old boy who believes that in order to pursue his dream he will have to choose between staying in his Spokane Indian reservation or moving out to an all-white school in the neighboring farm town. But things aren’t as easy as they seem when Junior tries moving schools because he know has to be part of two communities. Many conflicts form within the Spokane Indian reservation and the Spokane Indian reservation as well comes into conflict with the white community.

At the end of the story, although Jackson has no money he has clearly learned a great deal, based upon his struggles, and has found a sense of something worthwhile to fight for in life. Eventually, the pawn shop owner decides to give Jackson his grandmother's regalia. This illustrates the fact that Jackson is not invisible as he once feared. He can win the respect

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

Working thesis: In Sherman Alexie's brief tale, "What you Pawn I Will Redeem", Individuals struggle endlessly to satisfy the natural void inside them; with connections, cash, getting drunk–doing anything that they feel will improve their circumstances. Jackson is no special case to this scenario in human life. Jackson's story discloses his mission to fill his void. He needs to feel like he is connected to his people’s way of life and he does this by attempting to win back his grandma's formal

Growing up on a reservation where almost everyone has lost hope, Junior feels like an outcast for having a passion to chase after his dreams. When he moves to Reardan to find hope, he is gawked at and teased because he is the only Indian there. Junior faces internal conflicts within himself figuring out how to balance his two selves. According to Junior, “traveling between Reardan and Wellpinit, between the little white town and the reservation, [he] always felt like a stranger. [Junior] was half Indian in one place and half white in the other. It was like being Indian was [Junior’s] job, but it was only a part-time job. And it didn’t pay well at all” (Alexie 118). Junior is determined to discover his identity as it is evident in his choice of words. Feeling like a stranger wherever he goes, he believes that he is too white for the reservation while being too Indian for Reardan. The people on the reservation live in an atmosphere where they trust only each other and stick up for one another. However, when Junior goes to the reservation after being exposed to a community filled with white people, the Spokane’s do not see him as a true Indian anymore, hence the reason why Junior

Jackson Jackson, or Jackson to the second power, is a homeless Native American man that lives in the Seattle Washington area. He is an honest and kind alcoholic that has no idea how to manage or spend money. Whenever he gets even five dollars, or any money, he usually blows it on alcohol. Until one day he sees his grandmother’s regalia in a pawn shop window and goes on a quest to win it back by getting nine-hundred ninety-nine dollars. He gets some money here and there, but he always ended spending it on himself or others and could not save up the money. Ultimately, he ends up getting the regalia through some hard work and kindness of the pawn shop owner. In “What you Pawn I Will Redeem,” Sherman Alexie uses the character Jackson Jackson to

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a book about a young boy just entering high school who leaves his best friend and family to go to school mostly occupied by white people. This whole book follows him through his first year in this school where he tries to get a better education than he can get on the Rez, in the hopes that he will one day get off that reservation and out of his soul crushing poverty. “The Absolutely True diary of a Part-Time Indian” ATD, Sherman Alexie uses unfortunate events, social class and conversations to show that not everyone gets the support they need to follow their dreams.

The battles Jackson fought in the name of the "common man" were driven by his own unquenchable thirst for personal justification.

In the beginning of the story we are introduced to Nick, his father and uncle George who arrive to an Indian camp on an Island in Michigan. The Indians in the camp are not very privileged and they live in shanties. Nick, his father and uncle George are lead to a shanty were a young Indian woman is

In the readings the narrators are from two different minority groups. They had two different experience on how people was treating them because of their ethnicity. In the first story” What You Pawn, I will Redeem”, was about an Indian guy that was trying to get something back that belong to his grandmother. He went through hell trying to get that his grandmother regalia. This regalia meant so much to him because he had a strong relationship with his grandmother. According to the reading,” I’d sell it to you for a thousand dollars if you had it” (Alexie, page 1603). The most interesting thing about this quote is that the Native American man was homeless and he only had five dollars. The crazy part about this quote was that how would a homeless

Sherman Alexie writes in his story, What You Pawn I Will Redeem about a homeless Salish Indian named Jackson Jackson. Alexie takes readers on Jackson’s journey to acquire enough money to purchase back his grandmother’s stolen powwow regalia. Throughout the story, Jackson’s relationships with other charters ultimately define his own character. Alexie, a well know Native American author tells an all too common tale of poverty and substance abuse in the Native American community through his character Jackson. The major character flaw of Jackson is his kindness, which ultimately becomes his greatest asset when fate allows him to purchase back his grandmother’s powwow regalia from a pawn broker for only five dollars.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian features two main settings, the Pacific Northwest towns of Wellpinit and Reardan. These contrasting locations – one an impoverished Indian reservation and the other an affluent white community – become very important to the ever-shifting identity of our narrator, Arnold Spirit, Jr.

Sherman Alexie’s "What you Pawn, I Will Redeem" appears on the surface to be a simply written story of a homeless, alcoholic Indian in Seattle who is trying to earn enough money to reclaim his grandmothers Pow Wow regalia from a local pawn shop. But upon looking closely, there are many symbolic passages that my lead a person to much deeper conclusions. Throughout the story there are many clues that hint at the fact that this quest may not have been real, but a more "spiritual" experience for him. It could be argued that Jackson Jackson was on a modern day vision quest.