Sherman Alexie Quotes

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The quote, “I throw my weight against their locked doors. The door holds. I am smart. I am arrogant. I am lucky. I am trying to save their lives,” is a very important aspect in the story-line. It helps close out the story and tie everything together. It ties in all back to the beginning. That very first Superman comic book that taught Sherman Alexie how to read. As well as showing just how hard he worked to teach the children as much as possible.
Growing up on an Indian reservation, Alexie knows how it feels to be expected to be undereducated and arrogant. Therefore, when he has the opportunity to help change that for the children currently living on the reservation, it is important to him that he succeeds. This quote shows just how hard he is trying even though they don’t want to lear. Alexie tells us about the children who just don’t care about education, “Then there are the sullen and already defeated Indian kids who sit in the back rows …show more content…

I was smart. I was arrogant. I was lucky.” He goes on to state and the end of this paragraph, “I was trying to save my life.” During Alexie’s childhood, children on the reservation weren’t expected to be smart. Actually, the smart children were put down and even considered odd Alexie tells us in reference to his intelligence, “If he’d been anything but an Indian boy living on the reservation, he might have been considered a prodigy. But he is an Indian boy living on the reservation and is simply an oddity.” Intelligent Indians were so out of the ordinary that they were even feared. Alexie tells us, “A smart Indian is a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and non-Indians alike.” Knowledge is power and Indians were looked upon as if they shouldn’t have any. Many lived up to these standards. They just didn’t care about academic intelligence. Their primary focus was on their tribe and the contents

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