Sherman Alexie's Dreams In Reservation Blues

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

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.

The short story “Indian Education” by Sherman Alexie is about a boy who describes his life and how he was treated. The narrator describes his experience from first to twelfth grade. He was treated poorly at the beginning of the short story but later was acknowledged. An important theme that develops throughout Sherman Alexie’s “Indian Education” is that people often make wrong accusations about people from a specific race, which often leads to self-pity.

Alexie’s narrator describes a story of assumption and discrimination through not only the thoughts of the narrator and his life, but also how the narrator explains his thoughts and the diction he uses as he recalls certain moments. Throughout the passage, the narrator demonstrates how isolated he is, not only in the country where hia people are shunned, but also with others that are in a situation similar to his. Not only is there a feeling of loneliness and isolation, but also guilt of relation to how Indians are being treated today. Through stories of realistic fiction, Alexie addresses serious issues that others fail to.

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

The horses also help support John's notion; that, horses are spiritual beings because of how important they are in a cowboy's life. Cowboys hold horses in the highest regard. They use the horses in many ways. They use them as transport, companions, and to sometimes judge a person's character for example, when John meets Jimmy. Even John dreams that, as "his thoughts were of horses...still wild on the mesa who'd never seen a man afoot and who knew nothing of him or his life yet in whose souls he would come to reside forever" (118). This means that horses were wild and that they had souls. This is important because it shows that horses are innocent and pure. Also, it is important that John dreams about them because he sees them as a

“A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you are fast asleep.” This nostalgic melody sung by Disney’s Cinderella expresses the importance and meanings that dreams can have. In Native American culture, dreams are used as tools to guide one through life. Many big decisions made by Native Americans are influenced by dreams. It is said that supernatural powers or omens from spirits or gods are to be received via dreams or visions. In receiving them, magical abilities, or the ability to look into the future can be bestowed onto one. In Fools Crow, James Welch, illustrates several characters having visions and dreams. Throughout the book the dreams are seen as visions of the future. Welch uses these messages to reflect upon Native American culture and to foreshadow motives or events that will affect the characters later in the book.

Row, in “ Without Reservation” emphasizes that Alexie is a storyteller and not a prose fiction writer. A story teller, he defines, has work that, “... contains, openly or covertly, something useful …” (Row 1). Row goes on by giving evidence to why Alexie is a storyteller, and not your usual Indian writer. As he explains, Alexie reinstates the fragmented and ruptured Indian life instead of the political topics associated with them. With this idea in mind, Row believes that Alexie instills this behavior in his writing to give way for his sharp moral endings. These genuine moral endings, installment of stereotypes and Indian beliefs with consequences

Steinbeck presents dreams as a tool to aid the men of the ranch’s survival and happiness. They give a sense of purpose, a reward for long days

“Dr. Mather, if the Ghost Dance worked, there would be no exceptions. All you white people would disappear. All of you. If those dead Indians came back to life, they wouldn’t crawl into a sweathouse with you. They wouldn‘t smoke the pipe with you. They’d kill you. They’d gut you and eat your heart.”

The American Indian occupies a unique place in the White American imaginary. Indians, one is told, are cordial, wise, poor in the “humble poverty” sort of way, brown, there assist whites with either mystic knowledge or humorous ignorance. Figures such as Squanto, Tonto and Disney’s Pocahontas along with a large smattering of Westerns and cartoonish depictions have created this image of the Native American – an image which rarely translates into the present day. In contrast to this, Sherman Alexie’s novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a Native American coming-of-age story centered around the first-person point of view of the Native protagonist Arnold “Junior” Spirit, Jr. and his dual life on the Spokane Indian Reservation and his time off the reservation at an all-white public school in the town of Reardan, Washington. The novel revolves around themes like race, identity formation and mortality and details life on Indian reservations as it attempts to give a realistic account of contemporary Native American life, each which shape the novel in unique ways.

The mind is a powerful thing. This is a theme that is shared among the five short stories we have read in class (Happy Trails) (Christmas at Grammas) (The Mimis) (Crazy) (The Boy Without a Flag). This theme talks about how peoples minds are very influential on your decisions whether you realize it or not and how peoples emotions and beliefs change over time.

Before reading this book, I honestly knew little about Native American. I knew that many lived on reservations, but I knew nothing about those reservations. By being brutally honest, Sherman Alexie provided incite to how the everyday life of a teenage Native American is like. This book opened my eyes to the problems that Native American’s face, that I was in the dark about before.

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.

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.