The prescribed question that I have chosen is Power and Privilege: “How and why is a social group represented in a particular way?”
Code talker, by Joseph Bruchac is a book in which talks about a young mans life. The book is ideally meant to be for his grandchildren to read later on in the future. The author, Joseph talks about a young Navajo’s story and the battle he had to go through before and after the World War. Kii Yazhi, the main character, is courageous, Intelligent, and determined. His mother in the book is acknowledged as “mother” she is a sweet lady and caring about her son as well as the other Navajo people.
1) Paul is the hero in this film. According to Aristotle 's characteristics define Paul as the hero. He is fun loving very smart, and has a great ability to fly fish. However he possesses a flaw that results in his own downfall.
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.
Through the Medicine Wheel, we are reminded of our lifelong journey that is continuous upon birth and living through youth, adulthood and senior years. In Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse, the protagonist Saul experiences many obstacles which shape and develop his character. Saul’s life can be divided into more than the four stages of life to better understand his journey.
For once Buck learns to adjust, “his development was rapid.” Experience is his teacher, like, Sister Carrie’s or Stephen Crane’s Maggie. But his morality was not questioned by the reader because Buck is a dog. London chooses to ignore the moral implications of Buck’s thievery. For Buck’s “new” way of life was new to him only momentarily, London closes out Buck’s discourse on the law of club and fang. He comments on Buck’s strange awareness of memories of a previous life his ancestors had lived precisely as he has to live in his struggle for survival. The culture of generations of civilizations fell from Scruff Mackenzie, the same process occurs through Buck’s atavism.
Into the Wild, a book by Jon Krauker and a film by Sean Penn, features the journey of Christopher McCandless, the son of wealthy parents who graduates from Emory University as a top student and athlete. However, instead of embarking on a prestigious and profitable career, he chooses to give his savings to charity, rid himself of his possessions, and set out on a journey to the Alaskan wilderness. Chris McCandless claims, “Happiness is only real when shared." One should always be prepared to go into the wild. Chris McCandless, a young adult, made the egotistical decision to venture into the wild leaving behind his loved ones and future. Shaun Callarman argues that McCandless acted arrogant and ignorant going to Alaska. I agree with Callarman 's analysis about Chris McCandless and his journey to find himself. McCandless 's determination to live in nature risked his life.
In the novel of the Call of the Wild, Buck tried to adapt to his new and difficult life. He was forced to help the men find gold; he experienced a big transformation in him. At the end, he transformed into a new and different dog. Buck went through physical, mental and environmental changes. In my essay, I talked about how Buck was like at the beginning, what he changed into, and how he was forced to adapt his new environment, and underwent these changes.
Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony is a multidimensional novel full of Laguna symbols and themes that are easily overlooked in a casual reading. Like many of the elements in this work, Josiah's spotted cattle can be interpreted in multiple ways: as cultural metaphors, spiritual representation, and racial mixing. Silko's depiction of the spotted cattle creates a strong metaphor that links them closely to the Lagunas, illustrating the animosity the Laguna tribe has with the white Americans. While at the same time drawing a close connection between Tayo and the spotted cattle.
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is a book written by Sherman Alexie depicting many stories regarding life on the Spokane Indian Reservation. These stories tell of many serious problems the modern Native Americans are faced with today. Problems like poverty, racism, limited education opportunities, and alcoholism just to name a few. The book incorporates many different characters, including Victor Joseph, Thomas Builds-the-Fire, and Norma Many-Horses. These characters along with many other characters show what life was and still is like on some Indian Reservations. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven was also turned into a film called Smoke Signals in 1998 showing primarily the story in the book titled “This is what It
the experience but he tries to downplay it so as not to frighten the children.
In spite of difference ideologies, race, nationality, and gender, All the Pretty Horses has been credited with representing a new cowboy protagonist who is coming to conflict and ruin as he rides through landscape. Although the 16 years adolescent John Grady Cole reflects the culture of Texas ranching, All The Pretty Horses responds to the frontier 's modernization. The protagonist, John Grady Cole is conscious that something is 'happing to country '.
Overcoming a challenge, not giving up, and not being afraid of change are a few themes demonstrated in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Perhaps the most prominent theme derived from the novel is defying the odds, or in other words rising above the expectations of others. Junior Spirit exemplifies this theme throughout the entirety of the book. As Junior is an Indian, he almost expects that he will never leave the reservation, become an alcoholic, and live in poverty like the other Indians on the reservation—only if he sits around and does not endeavor to change his fate. When Junior shares the backstory of his parents, he says that his mother and father came from “poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people” (11). He knows that if his parents were not born into poverty, his mother would have gone to college, and his father would have become a musician. Additionally, on page eleven Junior says that his parents “dreamed about being something other than poor, but they never got the chance to be anything because nobody paid attention to their dreams.” Junior believes that he is trapped in this “circle” of poverty, and his dreams will be ignored just as his parents’ dreams had been. However, after Junior launches an old geometry book across a classroom, and it hits his teacher, Mr. P, in the face, Mr. P realizes something substantial about Junior: He has fought since his birth, beginning with the
"The coyote was laughing at me for being so many different things at once, and I was laughing at him for being so different and brave to come sit next to me, a man; a man with a rifle."
In his book the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie portrays a teenage boy, Arnold Spirit (junior) living in white man’s world, and he must struggle to overcome racism and stereotypes if he must achieve his dreams. In the book, Junior faces a myriad of misfortunes at his former school in ‘the rez’ (reservation), which occurs as he struggles to escape from racial and stereotypical expectations about Indians. For Junior he must weigh between accepting what is expected of him as an Indian or fight against those forces and proof his peers and teachers wrong. Therefore, from the time Junior is in school at reservation up to the time he decides to attend a neighboring school in Rearden, we see a teenager who is facing tough consequences for attempting to go against the racial stereotypes. The decision to attend a white school is a tough one and Junior understands that for him to survive and to ensure that his background does not stop him from attaining his dreams; he must battle the stereotypes regardless of the consequences. In this light, race and stereotypes only makes junior stronger in the end as evident on how he struggles to override the race and stereotypical expectations from his time at the reservation to his time at Rearden.