Paragraphs make sense to Sherman Alexie, the author of “Super Man and Me”. He can relate to the structure they provide and the way they hold the words captive. He understands meaning, and takes comfort in the joy that reading inspires; despite the hardship he faces from his classmates, socioeconomic situation, and societies expectations for him as a Native American student. He learns to read and uses this power to rise above the literal and figurative fences and obstacles that challenge him. The idea that the author sees the paragraph as a “fence” for words is a strong metaphor for his own life growing up on an Indian reservation in Washington State. As he states: “a paragraph was a fence that held words. The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose..I began to think of everything in terms of a paragraph” Alexie (16). He appreciates and conveys the imagery to the reader that within the fenced confines of a paragraph is a whole world of ideas, possibilities, relationships and adventure. The author shows that he has an appreciation for all the possibilities and ideas confined within a paragraph, but the knowledge to know that he has to think outside those confinements to truly appreciate what is inside. Through reading, the author begins to see see the …show more content…
Because of his desire for learning, his passion for reading and his intelligence, he was picked on and was an outcast among his schoolmates. The author states, “If he’d been anything but an Indian boy living on the reservation, he might have been called a prodigy. But he was an Indian boy living on a reservation and is simply an oddity” Alexie (17). In this regard the author is personified as somewhat alien in the reservation. He faces obstacles from his classmates, the school, which isn’t prepared to nurture his “unusual” intelligence and from society as a whole, which expects Indian kids to
What if all of a sudden your life changed and the next thing you know you find out you have magic in you. What would you do? who would you trust? This is what happens to a fourteen year old boy named Zachary Harriman in Hero by Mike lupica. Hero by Mike lupica is full of twists and turns and is a really good book. It all starts when Zach’s dad dies in a mysterious plane crash. Zach begins to investigate about his dad’s mysterious death because even though the police have concluded it was an accident he thinks otherwise. Throughout this book Zach learns a lot and overcomes and fails some challenges but is stronger in the end. Hero by Mike lupica is a really great book because of three things
“But we reservation Indians don’t get to realize our dreams. We don’t get those chances.” (p. 13) In The Absolutely True Diary of A Part Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, Junior, the narrator, is an Indian teenage boy living on a reservation, where no one's dreams or ideas are heard. The Indians on the reservation feel hopeless because they are isolated and disenfranchised. Junior learns how to cope with his hopelessness and breaks through the hopeless reservation life to find his dreams. Examining his journey provides important examples for the reader.
Imagine growing up in a society where a person is restricted to learn because of his or her ethnicity? This experience would be awful and very emotional for one to go through. Sherman Alexie and Fredrick Douglas are examples of prodigies who grew up in a less fortunate community. Both men experienced complications in similar and different ways; these experiences shaped them into men who wanted equal education for all. To begin, one should understand the writers background. Sherman Alexie wrote about his life as a young Spokane Indian boy and the life he experienced (page 15). He wrote to encourage people to step outside their comfort zone and be herd throughout education. Similar to Alexie’s life experience, Fredrick
The main character of this book is Susan Caraway, but everyone knows her as Stargirl. Stargirl is about 16 years old. She is in 10th grade. Her hair is the color of sand and falls to her shoulders. A “sprinkle” of freckles crosses her nose. Mostly, she looked like a hundred other girls in school, except for two things. She didn’t wear makeup and her eyes were bigger than anyone else’s in the school. Also, she wore outrageous clothes. Normal for her was a long floor-brushing pioneer dress or skirt. Stargirl is definitely different. She’s a fun loving, free-spirited girl who no one had ever met before. She was the friendliest person in school. She loves all people, even people who don’t play for her school’s team. She doesn’t care what others think about her clothes or how she acts. The lesson that Stargirl learned was that you can’t change who you are. If you change for someone else, you will only make yourself miserable. She also learned that the people who really care about you will like you for who you are. The people who truly love you won’t ask you to change who you are.
Alexie shows a strong difference between the treatment of Indian people versus the treatment of white people, and of Indian behavior in the non-Indian world versus in their own. A white kid reading classic English literature at the age of five was undeniably a "prodigy," whereas a change in skin tone would instead make that same kid an "oddity." Non-white excellence was taught to be viewed as volatile, as something incorrect. The use of this juxtaposition exemplifies and reveals the bias and racism faced by Alexie and Indian people everywhere by creating a stark and cruel contrast between perceptions of race. Indian kids were expected to stick to the background and only speak when spoken to. Those with some of the brightest, most curious minds answered in a single word at school but multiple paragraphs behind the comfort of closed doors, trained to save their energy and ideas for the privacy of home. The feistiest of the lot saw their sparks dulled when faced with a white adversary and those with the greatest potential were told that they had none. Their potential was confined to that six letter word, "Indian." This word had somehow become synonymous with failure, something which they had been taught was the only form of achievement they could ever reach. Acceptable and pitiable rejection from the
How White people assumed they were better than Indians and tried to bully a young boy under the US Reservation. Alexie was bullied by his classmates, teammates, and teachers since he was young because he was an Indian. Even though Alexie didn’t come from a good background, he found the right path and didn’t let his hands down. He had two ways to go to, either become a better, educated and strong person, either be like his brother Steven that was following a bad path, where Alexie chose to become a better and educated person. I believe that Alexie learned how to get stronger, and stand up for himself in the hard moments of his life by many struggles that he passed through. He overcame all his struggles and rose above them
Alexie was grew up in the Indian culture but unlike Sa he willingly leaves. Alexie specifically showcases the changes in his life throughout the structure of his text; through the idea of education. He wanted a chance to have more opportunities then what was given to him on the Indian Reservation. The structure of Alexies piece was specific and purposeful due to the fact that it truncated his life into years; the years of education. The audience is aware of the thematic shift in the seventh year when he “...kissed the white girl”(Alexie). The shift between his time on the reservation and his resilience through taking matters into his own hands despite the backlash he received through growing up. Alexie knew that he didn’t want to leave his culture willingly behind but it was something that he had to do in order to change his life and take charge of it like an “Indian” would
In a world dominated by technology, reading novels has become dull. Instead of immersing into books, we choose to listen to Justin Bieber’s new songs and to scroll through Instagram posts. We have come to completely neglect the simple pleasures of flipping through pages and getting to finally finish a story. Sherman Alexie and Stephan King’s essays attempt to revive this interest in books that has long been lost. They remind us of the important role that reading plays in our daily lives. “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me,” for instance, demonstrates how being literate saved the narrator from the oppressive nature of society. The author explains that even though he was capable of reading complex books at an astonishingly young
“A smart Indian is a dangerous person.” (Alexie 495). Foreshadows how dangerous he will become with the knowledge he has obtained from reading. He utilizes his knowledge to save other Native Americans from being statistics and falling to the stereotypes. It also demonstrates how knowledge is power since it becomes his weapon to defeat the adversity he faces in the life of a Native American. This foreshadowing is utilized to prove how reading at an early age caused him to obtain knowledge which he utilizes later in life to have the power of success. Alexie then uses his power to help the Native American youth. The device of foreshadowing is to give a hint to the readers on what is going to happen later in the text. From this use of foreshadowing Alexie utilizes the sentences to show how his exposure to reading creates an advancement to his life as he grows with
In Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, the main character Arnold, also known as Junior, has many health issues, and notably stands out in the crowd. It does not help that he is a poor Indian boy that lives on a reservation, and that he decides to go to an all-white high school. Many of his experiences at school, and on the Reservation, impact his identity. Experience is the most influential factor in shaping a person’s identity because it helps gain confidence, it teaches new things, and it changes one’s outlook on the world.
It was dangerous, according to societal standards, to be an educated Indian, or even an educated minority. In a society where you were destined to fail it was not abnormal for Alexie not to be recognized. The children knew they would be ridiculed so they would play the role of the dumb Indian while at school. Outside of school they would display themselves to be more educated than they gave themselves credit for. This behavior was widely expected of Indians and accepted by non-Indians: everyone but Sherman Alexie. His motivation to succeed encompassed his life, in high school he chose public schools over the reservation. Sherman Alexis still suffered from the same ridicule but the difference between him and his peers is that he would not let that interfere with his objective to prove to the society that Indians can be educated,
In the essay “Everything Now” Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers, author Steve McKevitt blames our unhappiness on having everything we need and want, given to us now. While his writing is compelling, he changes his main point as his conclusion doesn’t match his introduction. He uses “want versus need” (145) as a main point, but doesn’t agree what needs or wants are, and uses a psychological theory that is criticized for being simplistic and incomplete. McKevitt’s use of humor later in the essay doesn’t fit with the subject of the article and comes across almost satirical. Ultimately, this essay is ineffective because the author’s main point is inconsistent and poorly conveyed.
Adjusting to another culture is a difficult concept, especially for children in their school classrooms. In Sherman Alexie’s, “Indian Education,” he discusses the different stages of a Native Americans childhood compared to his white counterparts. He is describing the schooling of a child, Victor, in an American Indian reservation, grade by grade. He uses a few different examples of satire and irony, in which could be viewed in completely different ways, expressing different feelings to the reader. Racism and bullying are both present throughout this essay between Indians and Americans. The Indian Americans have the stereotype of being unsuccessful and always being those that are left behind. Through Alexie’s negativity and humor in his essay, it is evident that he faces many issues and is very frustrated growing up as an American Indian. Growing up, 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.
His poor self-esteem is connected with the idea of being poor and even believing that he deserves to be poor. It is not until Mr. P points out that he deserves better and is worth more that he actually starts to believe it. In fact, he is so used to believing that because he is Indian he is inferior in some way to the people around him. Alexie had makes the point that Indians have not been loved in this country. The authors mentions the perils of driving in certain area off the reservation, where Indians are arrested for the “crime” of Driving While Indian to give an example of the racism Native Americans face in the white world. Another example showing the inferior conflict is when Arnold’s sister marries a Flathead Indian and moves to their reservation in Montana, Arnold says: “Can you imagine a place where the white people are scared of the Indians and not the other way around? That’s Montana” (p. 90). Conversely, the Indians on Arnold’s reservation seem to believe that if they go into the white world they will be hurt or even killed, as Native Americans have been in the
In conclusion, Sherman Alexie created a story to demonstrate the stereotypes people have created for Native Americans. The author is able to do this by creating characters that present both the negative and positive stereotypes that have been given to Native Americans. Alexie has a Native American background. By writing a short story that depicts the life of an Indian, the reader also gets a glimpse of the stereotypes encountered by Alexie. From this short story readers are able to learn the importance of having an identity while also seeing how stereotypes are used by many people. In the end of the story, both Victor and Thomas are able to have an understanding of each other as the can finally relate with each other through Victor's father.