In the novel Reservation Blues, most of the characters struggle with their identity at some point. Victor has an especially strong urge to rebel against his Native American heritage, which is apparent in his violent, arrogant demeanor and his obvious problem with alcohol. Victor is tied to his past and has trouble coping with his life as it is, and is in a constant battle with himself, his surroundings, and other people.
Early in the book, Victor is portrayed as somewhat of a bully, and he and Junior are even referred to as, "two of the most accomplished bullies of recent Native American history." (page 13) Victor's closest and most meaningful relationship in the book is his friendship with Junior. It's unclear why Junior is best friends with Victor, but both of the men seem to need each other and depend on each other more than they might be willing
to admit. Victor never had a real relationship with his father, who moved to Arizona and then died of a heart attack. His mother had met another man and fallen in love with him very soon after Victor?s real father left.
Victor doesn?t seem to be very attached to his Native American culture. When his father left, his mother married a white man, so Victor grew up with a significant figure in his life being white. He seems to follow his mother?s example to some extent, and is frequently attracted to white women. Although Victor doesn?t seem to care about being Native American, in some way, his tendency to t...
He did not want to go and leave his family and especially his mother behind. When he first got to school, he did not want to let go of his mother, and it took the teacher to pull him off from his mother in order for him to take his seat. He was not allowed to speak Spanish at school with the other kids. His teacher hated Mexicans, thought they were dirty and ugly, and how they will bring knives and guns to school. Then Victor tries to run away from home instead of facing the punishment from his parents. One his way of running away, he meets these two cowboys and he is so fascinated with them, he tells them they can stay at his family’s ranch. When he talks to his father and his father decided to let the cowboys stay at the ranch. When Victor learns that the cowboys told his father about him running away and how it deeply upset his father. The cowboys were surprised because usually the white kids are the ones who always run away how the Mexican kids the ones are known as good people. The story then jumps to when Victor started going back to school where he had a teacher who was actually nice to him and cared about him. He was very good at mathematics, but was not very good at reading and would try anything to get out of it. His teacher started to notice that he was not reading aloud and how he was paying some the other students a nickel in order to get out of reading. His teacher thought since he was so good at math he would be able to catch up with his reading by the end of the year. Yet, when the end of the year ended up rolling around his teacher had to call his parents to let them know that Victor had to be held back a year. Yet, he father ended up becoming angry that the teacher did not even truly know his son and how his teachers kept pushing them around. Then he asked how much it would take to buy off the teacher to let Victor go to the next
Drifters by Bruce Dawe This poem is about a family that’s always on the move, with no place to settle down for long, hence the poem was titled ‘Drifters’ to describe this family. ‘Drifters’ looks at the members of this family response to frequently change and how it has affected them. This poem is told in third person narration in a conversational tone. This gives the feeling as if someone who knows this family is telling the responder the situation of this family.
He made the decision because education was limited at the Reservation and he wanted more for himself. It was in seventh grade where he leaned out the window and he first kissed a white girl for the first time and the rest of the Indian kids who stayed on the reservation gave him a hard time for being with a white girl. It is not until he goes to the eighth grade at the small town junior high school where he experiences a moment of culture shock when he sees most white girls are anorexic and bulimic. At a school dance after a basketball game Victor passes out during a slow song and the teachers assume he has been drinking because he is an Indian, when then later diagnosed to have diabetes. Victor plays basketball on the high school team and even though they are called the Indians he figures he is the only Indian to ever step foot in the gym. In tenth grade Victor passed the writing test for his driver’s license with flying colors but barely squeezed by on the driving section. He graduates as the valedictorian of the high school and watches as his former Indian classmates from the reservation high school cannot read, some are getting attendance diplomas and Victor realizes that he made the right choice and bettering himself for the future. When talked about having a class reunion Victor states, “Why should we organize a reservation high school reunion? My graduating class has a reunion every weekend at the Powwow Tavern.” (Alexie
His mother's love was shown throughout the beginning of the book so much more than his fathers was. Together the two parents loved him so much it helped him grow and this is why his childhood was so phenomenal. When Victor was sent off to Ingolstadt, he had no real idea of what it was like to be an adult. He was taken care of so well by his mother that once she was away from her parents, her father being at home and his mother being dead, he was not sure what was right and wrong. Victor's curiosity for knowledge is what led him to be a man of science and this is why he came up with the idea to experiment and create a human being from death. Without thinking of the results that were to come, Victor's ambition to become godlike pushed him to finish his project. The end result terrified Victor so badly that even he left him alone. To start, he left him alone in his apartment and when he returned, the monster was gone. “I could hardly believe that that so great a good fortune could have befallen me, but when I became assured that my enemy had indeed fled, I clapped my hands for joy and ran down to Clerval.” (Shelley 61) This is the first time that Victor does not care for his monster properly. After all of the care that Victor received from his mother, readers would think that Victor would grow up to be just like his parents and be so kind and gentle. Victor is unable to take responsibility of the monster that he created. Victor is prejudiced by the appearance of the monster which leads him to run away from his
Sherman Alexie writes in his story, What You Pawn I Will Redeem about a homeless Salish Indian named Jackson Jackson. Alexie takes readers on Jackson’s journey to acquire enough money to purchase back his grandmother’s stolen powwow regalia. Throughout the story, Jackson’s relationships with other charters ultimately define his own character. Alexie, a well know Native American author tells an all too common tale of poverty and substance abuse in the Native American community through his character Jackson. The major character flaw of Jackson is his kindness, which ultimately becomes his greatest asset when fate allows him to purchase back his grandmother’s powwow regalia from a pawn broker for only five dollars.
One of the hardest realities of being a minority is that the majority has a thousand ways to hurt anyone who is part of a minority, and they have but two or three ways to defend themselves. In Sherman Alexie’s short story The Toughest Indian in the World, Roman Gabriel Fury is a member of the Native American minority that makes up less than two percent of the total United States population (1.2 percent to be exact). This inherent disadvantage of being a minority, along with various cultural factors, influences the conflicted character of Roman Gabriel Fury and his attitudes toward the white majority. Through his use of strong language, demanding tone, and vibrant colors, Roman Gabriel Fury is able to reveal his complex feelings about growing up Indian in a predominately white world.
because of the way he is just abandoned by Victor and the way in which
The story chronicles situations that illustrate the common stereotypes about Natives. Through Jackson’s humble personality, the reader can grasp his true feelings towards White people, which is based off of the oppression of Native Americans. I need to win it back myself” (14). Jackson also mentions to the cop, “I’m on a mission here. I want to be a hero” (24).
On August 28, 1963 Martin Luther King made his famous “I Have a dream” speech on the Lincoln Memorial after the March on Washington. He delivered this speech to millions of people blacks and whites. This is one of the greatest speeches because it has many elements like pathos, logos, ethos, repetition, assonance, and consonance.
Victor knew he was a Native American that lived on the reservation. However, as he has grown up, it seems he has forgotten the tribal ties of the Native Americans. The people of that culture consider everyone in the tribe to be family and they are not ashamed of who they are and where they come from. Towards the end of the fictional narrative it is said, “Victor was ashamed of himself. Whatever happened to the tribal ties, the sense of community? The only real thing he shared with anybody was a bottle and broken dreams. He owed Thomas something, anything” (519). At the end of the story, Victor has finally realize that he is acting self absorbed. He realizes that this is not who he wants to be and he should not be ashamed to talk to Thomas Builds-a-Fire. Remembering his tribal ties, Victor gives half of his father 's ashes to Thomas. By doing that, Victor is thanking Thomas in his own way. Victor said, “listen, and handed Thomas the cardboard box which contained half of his father. “I want you to have this” (519). Individuals on the reservation thought Thomas was just a madman with weird stories. But in reality he was always true to his tribal identity and has even taught Victor how to get back to that. For example Thomas says, “I’m going to travel to Spokane Falls one last time and toss these ashes into the water. And your father will rise like a salmon, leap over the bridge, over me, and find his way
Overall, Alexie clearly faced much difficulty adjusting to the white culture as a Native American growing up, and expresses this through Victor in his essay, “Indian Education.” He goes through all of the stages of his childhood in comparison with his white counterparts. Racism and bullying are both evident throughout the whole essay. The frustration Alexie got from this is clear through the negativity and humor presented in the experiences he had to face, both on and off of the American Indian reservation. It is evident that Alexie faces discrimination from white people, who he portrays as evil in every way, to show that his childhood was filled with anger, fear, and sorrow.
King uses in his speech is Pathos, which is the appeal to someone 's emotions or beliefs. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. presented a strong feeling towards African-American people about how they were treated as equal individuals “But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination” (King par. 3). Another example of pathos that Dr. King used was when he uses vocabulary and phrases, such as “I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream” (King par. 12). He uses the appeal of emotion, especially the word of choice and diction to let his audience’s know what he would like to see in the
Nobody would love or care for him so he decided to kill Victor as an act of
In “This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona,” Alexie creates a story that captures the common stereotypes of Native Americans. For instance, in the story the narrator states, “Who does have money on a reservation, except the cigarette and fireworks salespeople?” (Alexie). This quotation shows that the narrator addresses the idea that all Native Americans must own businesses that sell fireworks and/ or cigarettes in order to be successful. In this example, Victor is shown to not identify with the Native Americans because he does not pursue the same job opportunities as many Native Americans do. Victor's character is used as a contrast to the stereotypes that , there he represents reality. Another instance in which the author incorporates a stereotype about Native Americans is when Thomas-Builds-the-Fire first makes conversation with Victor. Thomas-Builds-the-Fire informs Victor about the news of Victor's ...
Tayo faced a struggle of recognizing his essence: the true definition of himself outside and most especially inside. Being a half Native American and half-Caucasian in an environment of a Native American tribe in Laguna, he was constantly reminded of being an outcast. Externally, whenever he would try to fit in any of his race, both sides would reject him with ridicules. As Emo stated against Tayo, “There he is. He thinks he’s something all right. Because he’s part white. Don’t you, half-breed?” It presented hatred from a full-blooded Native American because, “the only reason for this hate was that Tayo was part white.” In fact the shame of being a “half-breed” continued down to his relatives. Auntie’s, “shame for what his mother (Tayo’s) had done, and Auntie’s shame for him (Tayo),” was surprising even though she was one of the closest blood relative of Tayo. On his Caucasian side, encounters were similar with the Native Americans. He was not truthfully acknowledged by the Caucasians he encountered under the shadows of his military uniform, which symbolizes “his service and loyalty” for the United States because, “they had the uniform and they didn’t look different no more. They got respect” . He was automatically disregarded as “the different o...