Award-winning American novelist Ann Hood states, “I was… an outsider growing up, and I preferred reading to being with other kids. When I was about seven, I started to write my own books. I never thought of myself as wanting to be a writer. “ Her statement is similar to that of Sherman Alexie’s life, where he was written off by society just because he was a Native American. Growing up he fell in love with literature, and ended up writing young adult literature. In his essay “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me”, Alexie successfully appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos while effectively employing several other literary devices in order to emphasize that one is capable of overcoming their individual obstacles.
Sherman Alexie utilizes anaphora in the first paragraph, focusing the readers’ attention towards the repetitive use of comic books, which is the foundation of his essay. He starts off by saying, “I learned to read with a Superman comic book…I cannot recall which particular Superman comic book I read…nor the means by which I obtained the comic book” (Alexie
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Alexie divulges that he looks up to his father by saying, “My father loved books, and since I loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well” (Alexie 12). Sherman Alexie, a young boy who loves his father, successfully utilizes apples to logos, pathos, and ethos. Since his father is his idol, he is a credible and reliable man in Alexie’s life, whom he loved, which logically explains that Alexie chose to love books. Because he loves his father, Alexie’s emotions of love and admiration drove him to follow in his father’s footsteps. His relationship with his father delves out necessary information for readers to tie his entire paper together by connecting the dots as to why Sherman Alexie is so entranced with literature, which corresponds with his love of
In this essay, McFarland discusses Native American poetry and Sherman Alexie’s works. He provides an overview of Alexie’s writing in both his poems and short stories. A brief analysis of Alexie’s use of humor is also included.
On December 10, 1950, in Stockholm, Sweden, one of the greatest literary minds of the twentieth century, William Faulkner, presented his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. If one reads in between the lines of this acceptance speech, they can detect a certain message – more of a cry or plead – aimed directly to adolescent authors and writers, and that message is to be the voice of your own generation; write about things with true importance. This also means that authors should include heart, soul, spirit, and raw, truthful emotion into their writing. “Love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice” (Faulkner) should all be frequently embraced – it is the duty of authors to do so. If these young and adolescent authors ignore this message and duty, the already endangered state of literature will continue to diminish until its unfortunate extinction.
Sherman Alexie grew up in Wellpinit, Washington as a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene tribal member (Sherman Alexie). He began his personal battle with substance abuse in 1985 during his freshman year at Jesuit Gonzaga University. The success of his first published work in 1990 incentivized Alexie to overcome his alcohol abuse. “In his short-story and poetry collections, Alexie illuminates the despair, poverty, and alcoholism that often shape the lives of Native Americans living on reservations” (Sherman Alexie). When developing his characters, Alexie often gives them characteristics of substance abuse, poverty and criminal behaviors in an effort to evoke sadness with his readers. Alexie utilizes other art forms, such as film, music, cartoons, and the print media, to bombard mainstream distortion of Indian culture and to redefine Indianness. “Both the term Indian and the stereotypical image are created through histories of misrepresentation—one is a simulated word without a tribal real and the other an i...
Alexie, Sherman. “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me.” The Arlington Reader: Context and Connections. 3rd Edition. Eds. Lynn Z Bloom and Louise Z Smith. Boston:
Alexie, Sherman. “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” Writer’s Presence: A Pool of Readings. 5th ed. Ed. Robert Atawan and Donald McQuade. Boston:Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006. 73-76. Print
...the story. By concluding in with a sulky mood, Alexie supports the idea that the Native American youth must continue to fight against injustice and to not let previous fights stop them. If they do not continue to fight for their rights, they will continue to live an impoverished life on the reservation.
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
Alexie’s purpose is to communicate to the reader not to believe everything you read. He wants us to question and think deeply whatever we read so far. Alexie does this through the details of his story. It’s the details that separate the real writer from the fake. Alexie shows he is the true writer because he talks about personal aspects of his like on the Spokane Indian reservation. Alexie writes “my story, which features an autobiographical character named Thomas Builds-the fire who suffers a brain injury at birth and experience visionary seizures into his adulthood”. The details that Alexie uses to communicate his personal knowledge of a specific situation. His diction and phrasing speaks to understand the people that he was telling the
American Indian students make up less than one percent of college or higher education students, and less than one third of American Indian students are continuing education after high school. In his memoir essay The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me, Sherman Alexie recalls learning to read, growing up on a reservation where he was expected to fail, and working tirelessly to read more and become a writer. Sherman Alexie had to overcome stereotypes in order to be accepted as smart and become a writer, which shows that it is harder for people who are stereotyped to be successful because they have less opportunities.
In his essay “Superman and Me”, Sherman Alexie details how he rose above the limits placed upon him because of his ethnicity. Alexie begins the essay by opening up to his audience and recounting how he taught himself to read by using a Superman comic book. Alexie’s family was living paycheck to paycheck, so he began reading anything and everything that he could get his hands on. The purpose of Alexie’s “Superman and Me” is to inform the audience of how one does not need to be affluent to learn. With pathos, repetition, and elaborate metaphors, Sherman Alexie evokes a change of mind from his audience.
In Sherman Alexie’s “Superman and Me,” Alexie tells the story for how he “learned to read with a Superman comic book” and how the knowledge he gains impacts his life (Alexie 110). The knowledge he gains from the comic book leads him to become an adept reader. He is an underappreciated prodigy child who because he lives on a reservation. He was provided a gateway which leads him to a successful career as an author and as a teacher of creative writing to children on reservations. Some may call his knowledge a blessing, but it is not without consequence. Alexie “fought with [his] classmates on a daily basis,” because they wanted him to “stay quiet when the non-Indian teacher asked for answers” (Alexie 111). Indian children are expected to be stupid, and to grow up working minimum wage jobs. Alexie has to survive constant bullying, harassment, and ridicule from his peers throughout his childhood. Despite the fact that Alexie is blessed with knowledge, it results in his being tormented--undoubtedly a
middle of paper ... ... ity going in the last paragraph. The structure of the passage helps the responder to clearly see the changed perspective of the author. The passage starts with the child’s perspective; the writing has almost a curious and flighty feel to it. This feeling is empathized through the use of verbs, adjectives, similes, metaphors, imagery and descriptive and emotive language.
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.
Reading a book is a great entertainment, but more importantly, it gives you more knowledge to learn. In a short story entitled “Superman and me” by Sherman Alexie, he discussed how it’s like to be in a minority, or an Indian in a non-Indian world, and how reading helped him get through it. Growing up, his father influenced him into reading books. Due to this he started to teach himself how to read and gained more knowledge. Though he is smart, it was hard for him to be noticed, “Indian children were expected to be stupid,” because of this he worked hard and proved the majority what he is capable of. Alexie’s passion in reading had helped himself and his fellow man rise against all the discrimination and be accepted by
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.