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Comparing The Lone Ranger And Tonto Fistfight In Heaven

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Writer Sherman Alexie has a knack of intertwining his own problematic biographical experience with his unique stories and no more than “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” demonstrates that. Alexie laced a story about an Indian man living in Spokane who reflects back on his struggles in life from a previous relationship, alcoholism, racism and even the isolation he’s dealt with by living off the reservation. Alexie has the ability to use symbolism throughout his tale by associating the title’s infamy of two different ethnic characters and interlinking it with the narrator experience between trying to fit into a more society apart from his own cultural background. However, within the words themselves, Alexie has created themes that surround despair around his character however he illuminates on resilience and alcoholism throughout this tale. …show more content…

This sets the stage for the narrator to ponder his prior life in Seattle and his experience of dealing with racism whenever in a prominent white neighborhood. Instead, Alexie, has his character show a resilience towards a challenging situation, by not responding with hostility or even fear but with the ability to defuse the situation by lightening it up with wit and humor. His protagonist character’s ability to brush off these situations as a normal aspect of living off the reservation plays an interesting take on what Alexie himself dealt with on a constant basis when he left his reservation for

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Imagination is the act of forming new ideas, images, or concepts of external objects not present to what is currently happening. In the novel, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie includes a series of short stories that use numerous literary device to express a variety of things. In the story “Imagining The Reservation”, Alexie uses setting to express the fact that both imagination, and the expression of creativity are what give Native Americans the ability to overcome the incredible devastation that they face. Setting is the literary device most frequently used in the novel, particularly in this short story. It is evident even in the title that the reservation is supposed to be a focal point of the story.

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In the story “What it means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” by Sherman Alexie, two young Native American men living on the Coeur D 'Alene Indian Reservation in Plummer, Idaho, named Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-the-Fire travel to Arizona to retrieve Victor’s absent father’s ashes. Victor’s father, Arnold, saved Thomas from a house fire when he was a baby, where both of Thomas’s parents died. This tragic event caused Arnold’s alcoholism to spiral into an extreme state, making him an abusive drunk. He abandons Victor and his mother when Victor is a young boy, and leaves the reservation for good.

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554 Words | 3 Pages

Throughout the book The Long Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie the Indians were always treated as minorities. For example, when the narrator walked into the 7-Eleven, the clerk “looked me over so he could describe me to the police later. I knew the look.” (Alexie 182) The clerk kept watching him, thinking he was about to steal something.

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788 Words | 4 Pages

Everybody goes through hardship even Native American boys on the spokane reservation except this boys hardship is way harder than most people. This story is about the personal story of a Native American boy who overcomes bullying, grief, and poverty to become more then then the people around him. First off the character Arnold Spirit Jr had so many bullying experiences in this story it wasn’t even funny, so i thought bullying would be a good topic to talk about in this essay. The first bullies talked about in this story are the Andruss brothers, they were thirty year old men who bullied a teenager. In the story the Andruss brothers were introduced shortly after Arnold and his bestfriend Rowdy arrived at a powwow near thier home.

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559 Words | 3 Pages

Sherman Alexie’s text The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfights in Heaven impacts the way the society thinks about Native Americans. Everyone of his short stories talks a little about what life was like being an Indian in the 20th century. This includes life outside the Indian reservation, poverty, etc.… A quote from the book that helps explain that is, “Books and beer are the best and worst defense”. There are always books and beer to go to when things get rough, but that 's not

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1704 Words | 7 Pages

The Insight of Native Americans in Sherman Alexie’s Jackson Jackson According to the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 11.7 percent of Native Americans and Alaska Natives deaths between 2001 and 2005 were alcohol-related, compared with 3.3 percent for the U.S. as a whole, more than three times the percentage of the general population. Native Americans are overrepresented in the homeless population by approximately 19 percent by a study of Department of Veterans Affairs Health Care for Homeless Veterans program. Jackson Jackson, in “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” by Sherman Alexie, embodies the above study. Unlike the traditional heroes who mostly win the fights, make all the right decisions, can do almost everything, and have perfect characteristics like bravery, strength, charm, Alexie portrays the protagonist, Jackson Jackson as a modern anti-hero who is very complicated.

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912 Words | 4 Pages

Sherman Alexie’s What You Pawn I Will Redeem, examines a number of topics affecting the American Indian community through the narrator of the story, Jackson Jackson. Jackson Jackson uses a particular rhetoric to appeal to logos, ethos, and pathos. The story follows a clear plot line and resolution, such as tales of knights in shining armor, contributing to it’s logical consistency. Meanwhile, the story’s narrative is nearly script-like in fashion, allowing the audience to observe scenes as bystanders rather than search for credibility of the character.

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497 Words | 2 Pages

In the absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian, we read about the Spokane reservation and the life of a junior who struggles due to his birth defect and generational trauma, as well as the problems I will write about in this essay. These challenges are recurring issues throughout Native American history since the first colonizers and are deeply rooted in the history of Native American oppression. This essay explores three major issues faced by the junior and his family in the book – poverty, alcoholism, and racism – and how they trace back to historical discrimination. Poverty is a huge issue and causes a lot of depression on the Spokane reservation as well as almost every other reservation; it affects many people living on reservations

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1020 Words | 5 Pages

Ever since Christopher Columbus came to the ‘new world’ in 1492 it has been a problem for the Native Americans. However, their resilience has kept their traditions and culture alive despite of adverse circumstances. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie describes the lives and stories of different individuals that live on a reservation in Washington State. The book is a collection of short stories and is it is written very well. Native Americans have been oppressed; however, they remain spiritual, community oriented, and traditional, which helps them maintain their identity.

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1209 Words | 5 Pages

His family was in need by normal standards, but overall he came from a middle class background. The main plot of his essay was that Alexie was different than his fellow other Native Americans due to the fact that he learned how to read and could read very challenging works, such as the Grapes of Wrath at a young age. Has he gets older, Alexie values education and knowledge and does not let preconceived ideas of the stereotypical concepts of how Natives Americans “are” let them get in his way. In this essay Alexie juxtaposes himself in his own essay to demonstrate how he broke the stereotypes against him.

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998 Words | 4 Pages

Through the characterization of Boone Caudill’s features of stoicism, endurance, and dream of liberation in the west, in his novel, The Big Sky, A.B. Guthrie constructs a narrative novel that highlights the archetypal epic journey of a lone man in the American west. Although Boone possesses the traits of a mythical hero, his flaw of savagery and fear of rejection curse him throughout the novel and eventually lead to his demise. By creating a universal western protagonist tragically conflicted by mythical heroism and human flaws, Guthrie suggests that the dream of the American west will suffer from a departure marked by conflict, just like Boone. Characterized by a sense of justice, a Romantic perspective on society and nature, bravery,

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1711 Words | 7 Pages

A Spokane Indian reservation in Wellpinit, Washington is the setting of Alexie’s book. The Indian reservation gives us a firsthand look of a poverty stricken community. The main character in the book Arnold and his family and mostly all other families living on this reservation are poor. Their community is isolated from society; the main character feels that “the reservation is meant to be a prison” in the sense that they are isolated from the real world (Alexie 216).

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462 Words | 2 Pages

Sherman Alexie uses a combination of reality and fiction in order to show the reader what he thinks the lives of people on the Spokane Indian Reservation was like. In regards to what differentiates the fiction from the non-fiction of the stories you could look at present day Native American Reservations. Some reservations are still plagued with alcoholism, and poverty of the past. While the characters and stories are just vessels to deliver the message and show what Sherman Alexie portrayed the reservation live to be. The reaction and impact that this has on the reader is the same as the age-old use of story telling.

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1020 Words | 5 Pages

Sherman Alexie’s Survival Equation and the Resilience of Native American Culture Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven portrays the hardships faced by Native Americans at the hands of the overpowering force of mainstream American culture. Alexie uses multiple perspectives in his book to convey the complexity of the situation on the reservation. However, his recurring themes such as survival, tradition, and underlying cultural ties connect the stories together as does the overarching message about the resilience of Native American people and their culture. With these consistent themes, the multiple perspectives found in his stories prove the validity of his cultural points due to their repetition. In his composite novel, Alexie reveals the resilience of Native American culture by breaking it down into a mathematical equation

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719 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Native American author Sherman Alexie covers the struggles of Indians living in poverty on the Spokane Indian Reservation. This story tells about Junior’s upbringing on the reservation and informs people about his family's struggles with poverty and the hardships they had to face because of it. Alexie uses conflict, irony, and symbolism. To help people understand the idea of poverty on the rez, and how it affected him, his freinds, and family. Alexie uses symbolism to represent poverty on the Spokane reservation.

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