Essays on Alexie

Sherman Alexie’s poem “Evolution” is a scathing indictment of the white European settlement of the Americas, and the subsequent subjugation of the Native American people. By spinning the tale of white conquest over the Natives, and the economic dependence the Natives were forced to have on whites after that, into a fable involving famed Western icon Buffalo Bill, Alexie satirically points out the hypocrisy by which the white Western narrative makes a fable out of the removal of Native peoples and culture from their own hands. The poem begins with the establishment of Buffalo Bill, who “opens a ...

The narrator in the ‘What You Pawn I Will Redeem’, Jackson, tells the story of his life and the inability to complete school, his multiple marriages and several kids with different women. He explains how he ended up in the streets, how he uses his wits to win the trust of hotel managers for the use of hotel bathrooms and his close friendship with two friends, Junior and Rose of Sharon both homeless people of Indian-Americans. One day in their normal street adventures they come across a regalia that looked like his grandmother’s, and upon talking to the ...

Awareness is always the first step for shielding the damage done by ignorance. Physical abuse, substance abuse, and sex are the stark challenges for the modern society and the most appropriate sense of precaution can be developed by the power of awareness about these issues prevalent in the modern society . “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie is a book that has been sought by parents to be banned in the USA. In his article, “Darkness Too Visible”, author Meghan Cox Gurdon has professed the ban of this book as the content of the book ...

Popular culture and the media have assisted the boundaries that exist between, ethnicities, leaving in their wake hybrid personnel who are in the struggle to obtain a sense of identity. It might be that popular culture has assisted in producing new homogenously mixed “American” identity. In fact, in the contemporary age of global communication as well as information, ethnic boundaries have turned to be more permeable. In fiction, young American authors of various ethnic backgrounds, characters have often chosen to portion allegiances to their ethnic history, which comprises of important parts of most young American’s environment, and Sherman ...

The book review herein, and critical literary analysis seeks to present a cogent, well-thought out evaluation of the work written by Sherman Alexie entitled ‘The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.’ At the outset, it is important to note that the main literary device the writer uses is a personal, first-person perspective and narrative. The tone is frank, casual and simple-structured English. Also, as the author provides myriad vignettes and short anecdotal stories throughout the book, the reader has an opportunity to deeply feel empathy for Alexie’s protagonist – but, sometimes cannot decipher whether to laugh or cry. ...

“What You Pawn I Will Redeem” is a short story written by Sherman Alexie and it is about an Indian man, whose name is Jackson Jackson, who is in search of his identity in life. Jackson has friends and most of them are Indian and his faith in the humanity of people is great and amazing. He believes that the good he does will come back to him and he lives by this rule. Jackson never says that, but it is obvious from his actions. He is kind and considerate towards people and he is rewarded because of that ...

While the bulk of the poem Capital Punishment by Sherman Alexie concentrates on an Indian facing capital punishment through the eyes of the prison cook, the last few lines take the focus off of the man about to be executed and places it upon the reader themselves. In these few lines the prison cook basically points out every one of us is guilty of something in life, saying, “,,,if any of us/ stood for days on top of a barren hill/ during an electrical storm/ then lightning would eventually strike us/ and we'd have no idea for which of ...

“A Navajo Monument Valley Tribal school” is a literary work done by Sherman Alexie. The poem displays football as a symbolic activity that facilitates bonding between Indians in this school. Playing football together makes these Indians have the feeling that they are warriors. The act of competing against each other is the one that makes them feel so. Everyone is seen as an important person in the game; that's why the poet says, "everyone's son being the quarterback."(Anderson, Hassler and Coles, P 129). It also means that the person of one person or two in the team, makes ...

Flight Pattern is a story of confusion of Priorities

Thesis Statement; Flight Pattern is a story of confusion of Priorities; Nationality against racism, Ignorance against appreciation, Family pride against ambitions. This illustrates the author’s belief that assimilation into foreign societies is often traumatic. Flight Pattern is a fictional product of Sherman Allexie. In this novel, the authors elucidate his prophecy on racism with the use of the acts of characters. The agenda is to pose the impression of the general tendency of Americans to judge an entity from race perception rather than individual character. Hence, the central character of the story 'William' is placed as an Indian Spokane ...

Sports have an elemental role in developing the personality of students physically, socially and mentally. Sporting activities have many benefits including maintenance of healthy weight necessary for daily life activities. Sports also prevent obesity, heart diseases and diabetes to improve the psychological and moral state, which help to relieve depression, psychological problems and anxiety. Sport is one of the activities that students willingly accept and take part. Moreover, many students enjoy undertaking these sporting activities. Sport are an elemental factor in forming integrated personalities for students through different programs aiming at working on different programs of rehabilitating, processing and ...

As the world struggles against the worst effects of increasingly sedentary lifestyles, and a diet of fast foods, physical activity is once again gaining currency as a public health priority. This is not least because those who are worst affected are children and youthful members of the population, who hold the promise for the future of the United States, as well as the rest of the world. It is however possible that sedentary lifestyles have done more than worsen the waistlines of American people, but also rendered them less intelligent. This paper argues that the physical activity increases intelligence, psychological and ...

In Sherman Alexie’s book War Dances, the author navigates his precarious position in between white and Native American culture, attempting to reconcile the creature comforts and medical science of Western civilization with the innate attributes of the Indian experience. In his titular story, “War Dances,” the slow death of his father and his gradual hearing loss from a hydrocephalic tumor are greeted with the same sense of humor, Alexie attempting to hide his utter fear and his grief at the loss of his father with sardonic jokes and poetry. The effect of white subjugation of Native Americans, and ...

Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” depicts the frustration of life in the cities of America and the ultimate transformation of the dissatisfaction into an artistic and political movement. The story is set in the period after World War II and in the middle of the revolution of the culture and politics that changes the entire country. In the story, the unnamed narrator wants to move beyond the traditional musical conventions towards the radical new movement. Baldwin’s style of writing is distinctive in the story as because of the “eloquence and rhetorical force’ (Spark’sNotes,com, 2014). The story ...

Introduction

Through a suave recount of a childhood episode, Sherman Alexie presents in his essay “Superman and Me” the encounter between the Native American culture and the American popular culture. This essay exposes a personal analysis of Alexie’s writing, decrypting the symbols compressed within “Superman and Me”. Sherman Alexie’s “Superman and Me” transmits critical emotions, as the readers are prompted to understand how a children belonging to an Indian community develops his cognitive skills by reading a “Superman” book, which seems to have shaped the author’s personality.

Body

The essay “Superman and Me” seems to be addressed to a children audience, as it recalls a ...

The American culture is characterised by a people whose history has been ignored and ridiculed. The very people that defined the current America were frustrated and lived meaningful life. They are described as people who had very clean hearts yet not even a place to call their home. Most of the stories we read in literature about them has a unique description of their kindness and desire to help. Being kind is so much knit within their hearts that it does not matter how much they give. They believe that with the little they have, they can always make a difference in a person’ ...

Response 5

Culture when broadly applied is a term that can be used to describe virtually all avenues and aspects of human life. In his textbook Cultural Anthropology, Richley H. Crapo defines it as “a learned system of beliefs, feelings, and rules for living around which a group of people organize their lives; a way of life of particular society” (Crapo, 2013). Perhaps that most astounding thing about humankind’s way of life is the vast diversity in culture that emerges in different groups of people. The differences in culture come from a variety of factors and one of the most important is geography. American culture ...

Analysis of the sacred world views

Introduction The Americans for a very long time accorded the Native Americans cold treatment. In fact sometimes, they brutally dealt with them and considered them as soldiers of the country that they were harshly treated in. This brought a serious and long time struggle between the Americans and the Native Americans. The Americans amassed the land that belonged to the Native Americans and made them squatters in their own land. Thus, this from the outlook was a different opinion from the world’s perspective. In the analyses, there are varied examples which distinctively show the different perceptions of the white ...

Peer Review Worksheet #2

Still hungry in America Summary The main issue is about starvation in most countries. The author focuses starvation in America and recommends ways in which this phenomenon can be eradicated. The article gives a brief overview of how this issue has been given attention by many leaders of the world. The article strives to make starvation to be a global problem and not confined to the United States alone. This is a global problem. The article also focuses on the effort that have been done by both the state and non-governmental sector in the quest to solve his problem. The ...

It is very rare to find a book that shatters your heart into a million tiny pieces and puts them back together whilst making you laugh at the same time, over and over again. One such book is Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian. Apart from the numerous awards this book has won, Neil Gaiman’s quote on the cover: “I have no doubt that in a year or so it'll be winning awards and being banned” is among the myriad of the reasons to pick up this book and give it a read. The semi-autobiographical, first person-narrative of ...

Discussion Board Answers

Part I.

When Jackson Jackson means that he has been “disappearing” slowly, “piece by piece,” (Alexie 401) he talks about his dissolving identity, on a number of fronts. First of all, his Native American culture has been trampled on by the brutal materialism of the American Dream, and his grandparents have passed away, taking with them his sense of personal history. As a result he has drifted from wife to wife and has now been homeless for six years. All it takes, though, is the return of his grandmother’s regalia for him to feel a sense of belonging: “I knew that ...

In Sherman Alexie’s story, What You Pawn I Will Redeem, the homeless narrator Jackson Jackson is a Spokane Indian. When he describes himself, he says, “Piece by piece, I disappeared. And I’ve been disappearing ever since,” he is describing both a literal disappearance and a figurative one (401). Literally, he has been discussing his disappearance from his lovers’ lives, meaning that he didn’t simply walk out on them with no notice. Figuratively, he means he is slowly losing his identity as a person and as a member of his ethnic background as he becomes more absorbed in his alcoholism and vagrant ...

Sherman Alexie, in his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, reflects on alcoholism as a social problem that has faced and is still facing the Native American Society today. He conveys alcoholism as a source of domestic conflicts, Loss of potential and lives, and the disintegration of the moral fabric within the Native American Society. He also conveys alcoholism as generic and is hence passed from generation to generation among Native Americans.

Sherman Alexie conveys alcohol as a key source of domestic conflicts throughout his book. One of the places where alcohol is conveyed as being a source of domestic ...