Fistfight In Heaven

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” is a short story by Sherman Alexie to presents a series of deep questions about modern Native American life in the form of a prose poem. Narrator shows in his dialogue form suggesting that he believes he doesn’t belong anywhere. The conflicts with his white girlfriend gets worse every day, eventually, narrator moves back to Indian reservation. Leaving our narrator with depression and loneliness at the end. In order to convey the central idea of the story, Alexie uses setting, characterization, and conflict to point out racial difficulty from the perspective of narrator’s daily life. The setting of this story is late 20th century where racism is still a norm in US. While our narrator settles in

Deposited on narrator being Native American, Alexie refers narrator as a Tonto and his girlfriend as a Lone Ranger. Tonto is very straight forward character and stress over by his surrounding while his girlfriend is very emotional and bothersome character to Tonto. And narrator gives example of their relationship as him being an “executioner’s hood” or “war paint and sharp arrow” while his girlfriend is “kindergarten teacher.” His girlfriend action towards him is rather impulsive, for examples, “Drunk all the time and stupid” (Alexie 16) and “And don’t ever comeback” (17), meaning Tonto is irrelevant to her life. He refers the story title “Fistfight in Heaven” as endless fight, but no physical contact, with his white girlfriend. Furthermore, He mentions “argument was just as damaging as a fist,” (16) to represent their relationship is on edge of the cliff. It would be reasonable if he tries to solidify his relationship, but he seeks nothing but the Indian

Native American, where he desires up hold some Indian pride. He began with mentioning conversation about the 7/11 cashier, a tone of cashier being hostile to narrator, and police officer being unfriendly to narrator. When he got drunk off and start breaking the lamp while arguing with his girlfriend conveys that his in denial. Where he instinctively defends by insulting back to her, call schoolmarm. And breaking the lamp to find his male dominance. His girlfriend keep buys the replacement lamp which narrator doesn’t recognize the effort that she had to put in this broken relationship. He mentions “when one person starts to look at another like a criminal, then love is over” (Alexie 15) to explain that he is unreliable and meet final calamity. After his nightmare, he figures that his relationship with his girlfriend will remain broken, he decides to move back to reservation to take a break. When he encounters the BIA chief’s kid in gym basketball court, owning them. “He played Indian ball, fast and loose, better than all the Indians there.” (18) Here we see that age-old conflict surfacing, he eagerly wanting to take him down as if there is an intruder in his backyard, but he fails in process. After all, narrator shows endless small conflicts between Indian and white people to conclude his pride in