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The Lone Ranger And Tonto Fistfight In Heaven Essay

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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 …show more content…

Rather than traditional anger, he seems to suggest that anger is meant to refer to the recognition of the suppression of their culture by the invading force of American culture, which should foster a conscious need to remain separate from said culture. In “The Trial of Thomas Builds-the-Fire,” Thomas states: “Some may have wanted to kill me for my arrogance, but others respected my anger, my refusal to admit defeat” (Alexie 98). If this sentiment were transposed into another equation similar to the survival equation Alexie wrote about, it would read “anger = resilience.” Anger is rooted in the wrongs of the past for the Native Americans. When combined, as Alexie suggests in his equation, with a strong imagination that can envision a better world or at least a future where Indian culture can be positively viewed, the product is survival in the

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