Fighting the self in Sherman Alexie's "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven"
Sherman Alexie's short story "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven," relates the story of the narrator, an Indian who has left his reservation, who is adrift in the white world of Seattle. The narrator feels that everywhere he goes he is regarded like a threat -- even the 7-11. This leaves him in a constant state of anger, an anger that is intensified by alcoholism and a failing relationship with a white woman. Treated as someone who is prone to violence because of his race by a prejudiced society, the narrator eventually becomes violent, in a kind of unconscious self-fulfilling prophesy. He constantly fights with his white girlfriend. "In Seattle, I broke lamps. She and I would argue and I'd break a lamp, just pick it up and throw it down. At first, she'd buy replacement lamps, expensive and beautiful. But after a while, she'd buy lamps from Goodwill or garage sales. Then, she just gave up the idea entirely and we'd argue in the dark" (Alexie).
The narrator begins to turn against strangers because of his frustration and sense of personal disempowerment. Early on in the story, he tries to coax a 7-ll clerk to turn his back on him, sensing the clerk is frightened to do so because of the narrator's menacing appearance. Eventually the boy says "I was hoping you weren't crazy. You were scaring me" and laughs, and gives the narrator his order for free. At times like this it is unclear if the speaker is actually menacing or the victim of prejudice, since the clerk never explicitly makes a reference to the fact the narrator is an Indian, the narrator merely makes the assumption (Alexie). The narrator is,...
Sherman Alexie's book, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven: "Every Little Hurricane," "What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona," and "The Trial of Thomas Builds-the-Fire." The focus is on the writing style of these stories, specifically, on the literal and metaphorical imagery, the interweaving of the human and the natural, and the shifting back and forth from reality to fantasy. Through his use of Alexie manages to create
The decision of the pilot to crush the plane in the city can have no valid motivation and is deeply painful for Jimmy who feels betrayed by his student. The pilot who decides to crash the plane is a further stereotype, an incarnation of the belief that people belonging to the same cultural space as him are most likely to engage in terrorist acts. Throughout his transformations, Zits realizes that
While different views of the American experience, then, both of these stories and their authors are quite deserving of their place in the canon. Edwidge Danticant's "Seven" is similar to "The Third and Final Continent" in terms of plot; an immigrant man that as finally received his green card is preparing for the arrival of his wife. This story is as concerned with the meeting of the husband and wife
House Made of Dawn by N.Scott Momaday - An Extension of Central Thematic Preoccupations in Sherman Alexis' 'Indian Killer' This is a two and half page paper on two novels. 'House Made of Dawn' by N. Scott Momaday though encompasses various genre of autobiography, history, fiction, memoirs, and ethnography, this paper will strive to present an analysis of the awakening factor highlighted in the strong wordings of the author, as also
The choice cannot be repudiated or duplicated, but one makes the choice without foreknowledge, almost as if blindly. After making the selection, the traveler in Frost's poem says, "Yet knowing how way leads on to way/I doubted if I should ever come back" (14-15). And at the end, as one continues to encounter different forks along the way, the endless paths have slim chance of ever giving the traveler
Fern Hill (Dylan Thomas) The "Poetry Explications" handout from UNC states that a poetry explication is a "relatively short analysis which describes the possible meanings and relationship of the words, images, and other small units that make up a poem." The speaker in "Fern Hill" dramatically embraces memories from his childhood days at his uncle's farm, when the world was innocent; the second part brings out the speaker's loss of innocence and
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