Sherman Alexie Rhetorical Devices

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.

Alexie goes on to demonstrate how his passion for reading influenced his childhood. He describes that, before he could even read, he would recognize what a paragraph was. Alexie explains, “I realized that a paragraph was a fence that held words” (Alexie 279). Then, Alexie further explains how he correlated other things in his life as paragraphs, such as the reservation in respect to the United States or the individual members of his family. He goes on to clarify how he found the Superman comic and viewed each panel, with text and illustrations, separately as its own paragraph. Alexie states that while reading the comic he says, “Aloud, I pretend to read the words” (Alexie 280). He knew these paragraphs together told a story and even though he could not read, he used the pictures to assume what the narrative was saying. With these details of his early beginnings of learning to read, the reader can further establish that his family’s economic status had no

Sherman Alexie recalls his childhood memory of learning to read, and his teaching experience in “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me”. He devotes his interest to reading. By this way, he breaks the stereotype that Indian boys are expected to be stupid and dumb, and later on he becomes a successful writer because of his endeavor to read. Alexie vividly narrates his younger life by using metaphor and repetition with a confident tone, in order to strengthen his description of his reading talent, his influence to the other Indian boys and how he struggles in poverty to change his life.

Syntax gives the readers an idea of Alexie when he was first learning to read. In the fourth paragraph, he explains on how he started reading. As he was analogizing the world in paragraphs he began reading that Superman comic. For him to understand the text he began piecing the pictures together into words. His use of simple sentences gives the reader a feel to be in his place. “Superman is breaking down the door,” he states that was what he was interpreting from the pictures and then pretended to say those words,” Superman is breaking down the door.” With this picture and these words he concludes that Superman is saying words and those words, “I am breaking down the door.” Alexie’s way of learning to read relates to other people. These readers could have used elements like

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.

What would you do if you could not read? What problems do you think you would come across? After reading Malcolm X’s “Learning to Read” and Sherman Alexie’s piece, “Superman and Me”, these are a few questions that a reader might ask themselves. Sherman Alexie and Malcolm X are both great writers. This was not always the case though. Malcolm X and Sherman Alexie taught themselves how to read. Alexie at a young age Malcolm X, as a young adult. After they learned to read and write they wrote for many reasons and about many topics. When reading these two essays, you can see that there are many things that are significantly the same as well as having some differences all throughout the text. These similarities and differences include the pathos in both essays, and the ethos that Alexie has that Malcolm does not have pertaining to the subject of their papers. In Malcolm X’s “Learning to Read” and Sherman Alexie’s “Superman and Me” they are both trying to persuade the reader that something needs to be done and why.

Superman and Sherman Alexie both have unique qualities about them. The passage states that Sherman Alexie could read complicated books at a young age while other kids had a hard time. Superman

As for Sherman Alexie, a Native American who grew up on the reservation, found an early interest in reading when he stumbled upon a Superman comic book. He had begun to associate the pictures to words that were on a page. “I look at the narrative above the picture. I cannot read the words, but I assume it tells me that ‘Superman is breaking down the door.’ Aloud, I pretend to read the words and say, ‘Superman is breaking down the door.’ Words, dialogue, also float out of Superman 's mouth. Because he is breaking down the door, I assume he says, ‘I am breaking down the door.’” Despite not having a traditional education, Alexie was able to assemble a meaning of a paragraph which opened up a new world to him in multiple ways

As he grew up to become a writer, we see pain in the story he tells. “I loved those books, but I also knew that love had only one purpose. I was trying to save my life” (pg.18). Alexie wanted to be someone greater than what others expected him to be. People would put him down constantly, but he fought back just as much. He tried to save himself from the stereotypes of being just another dumb Indian. He had more determination to prove others wrong when it came too exceeding in reading to further excel in his daily life.

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

A large similarity between the two works of literature consist of the journey of breaking certain standards of education particularly in people of color. In the essay “Superman and Me,” Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation where to a non-Indian adult the expectation of the Indian students were very low. With these exceptions set at such a low standard the desire to give students a proper education were extremely limited. The students, as Alexie says, “struggled with basic reading,” and overall, “were expected

Imagine you are a smart young Indian child.Now imagine you have just learned to read.How you learned to read?From a Superman comic book.you may think this is preposterous, insane even, but this all happened to a man named Sherman Alexie.

Sherman Alexie is an American writer and poet and his literary works focus mostly on discrimination that Indians face. In most of his work, he criticizes white Americans for taking away land from the Indians and for ill-treating them. Sherman Alexie has a unique way of putting across his thoughts. He is very frank, has a wit that is quick and a dark sense of humor .He does not hesitate to write about the harsh and gruesome reality of the lives of Indians at reservations. He believes that “The real interesting stuff is in the cellar and the attic.” That is why his books have always been so popular. He says, "I was always the depressed guy in the basement. But I've borrowed their sense of humor and made it darker and more deadly - a weapon of self-defense. Being funny you win hearts quicker; people laughing are more apt to listen."

Sherman Alexie had a different mindset than the other Indian kids on the reservation. He was smart and arrogant with the mindset and discipline to the refusal to fail. His will not be put into the stereotype set by the non-Indian world around him. He would not be denied the opportunity to better his future despite the hatred that he experienced on a daily basis. To guarantee that he would not fail he began reading at any given point in time he had. He would read before and after class, before and after bed, etc. etc. At any given time Sherman Alexie would read anything

    In the story “ Superman and Me”, Sherman Alexie defies the odds by learning how to read on his own from the books that his father would bring home. His father was a man that loved to read and so Sherman, like his father, started to love to read once he saw how passionate his dad was about it. In the story Alexie says, “ My father loved books, and since I loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well”, this is a great sentence to show just how dedicated Sherman was to learning to read and not be like any other typical Indian boy. He did not want to be like