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Sherman Alexie Essay Analysis
Superman and Me gives us a deeper look and understanding on what the Indian Reserve was like for Sherman Alexie and how a little skill gave him the power to overcome his hard circumstances. For the majority of the children growing up on the reserve, school was just another chore. They would fear of succeeding in front of the non-Indians so instead they just hid themselves and just tried to get through the day. Sherman Alexie was different, he wanted change and wasn’t afraid to get it. Through this story he is trying to inform the audience that even though he grew up in a small reserve, he was still able to use his skill of reading and confidence to get him out of his hard life and enter a world of learning, becoming, and teaching the people like him who don’t understand the effect of a small skill.
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Throughout this essay Sherman Alexie is conveying his ideas by telling his story to trying to encourage people by letting them know that although it may start off rough there are ways to overcome.
At the beginning of this essay Alexie gives some background information on his story which informs the reader that he may not have had the education that he would have liked, but he got by by reading. He says that he loves his father and he wanted to be able to read like his father. So, that’s what he did. By reading it gave him the confidence to not act like all the other young Indian boys on the reserve. He wasn’t afraid to let people know that he was smart. He cared about reading and wasn’t going to give that up. By having this strong confidence in his reading it inspired people in generations today to succeed in school even if they are in an Indian reserve and may not have the most stable
life. Sherman Alexie communicates his meaning of this essay about inspiring and taking his life lessons and bringing them to people who need it by using rhetorical questions. In the last paragraph he uses rhetorical questions by asking questions about the guest teachers like “Who were they? Where are they now? Do they exist?” These questions are trying to tell the audience that he was never exposed to teachers that taught him that Indians were able to write poetry, short stories, and novels. He is making the point that there were never people in his life that gave him the ability to believe that he could do something other than just sit in his class and listen. These rhetorical questions also show that even though he wasn’t given the proper tools and education to succeed he wanted to change that for future generations by going in and helping and teaching them. He didn’t want to cheat them out of the education they deserve. He wanted to teach them to believe in something more than just being another Indian kid on a reserve.
As I grew up learning to read was something I learned in school, yet for Sherman Alexie and Malcolm X can’t say the same. These two amazing authors taught themselves, at different stages of their lives, to read. In Sherman Alexie’s essay “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” and Malcolm X’s essay “Learning to Read” they both explain the trials and experiences they went through that encouraged them to work to achieve literacy.
Alexie Sherman, a boy under an Indian Reservation that suffers from bullying since the 1st grade, who would have a hard time being around white people and even Indian boys. US Government provided him glasses, accommodation, and alimentation. Alexie chose to use the title "Indian Education" in an effort to express his internalized feelings towards the Native American education system and the way he grew up. He uses short stories separated by the different grades from first grade to twelfth grade to give an idea of what his life was like. He seemed to have grown up in a world surrounded by racism, discrimination, and bullying. This leads on to why he chose not to use the term Native American. He used the term "Indian" to generate negative connotations
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.
While both Zitkala Sa and Sherman Alexie were Native Americans, and take on a similar persona showcasing their native culture in their text, the two diverge in the situations that they face. Zitkala Sa’s writing takes on a more timid shade as she is incorporated into the “white” culture, whereas Alexie more boldly and willingly immerses himself into the culture of the white man. One must leave something behind in order to realize how important it actually is. Alexie 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.
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.
No matter of the chances, you have to push towards what you want. This story talks about how he first learned how to read, his intelligence as a young Indian boy, and Alexie as an adult as an teaching creative writing to Indian kids. “I learned to read with a Superman comic book. Simple enough, I suppose. I cannot recall which particular Superman comic book I read, nor can I remember which villain he fought in that issue. I cannot remember the plot, nor the means by which I obtained the comic book. What I can remember is this: I was 3 years old, a Spokane Indian boy living with his family on the Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern Washington state. We were poor by most standards, but one of my parents usually managed to find some minimum-wage job or another, which made us middle-class by reservation standards. I had a brother and three sisters. We lived on a combination of irregular paychecks, hope, fear and government surplus food”(paragraph 1). In the first paragraph, Alexie explains that he first learned to read with a Superman comic book. But before he could read the comic, Alexie taught himself about paragraphs and how they relate to the real world. He thought of everything as paragraphs such as his reservation he lived on was a paragraph to the United Sates. Or his family as a essay of paragraphs, each family member being a paragraph. He taught himself how to read the text by looking at the pictures and dialogue and pretending to say aloud what h...
Although the greater picture is that reading is fundamental, the two authors have a few different messages that they seek to communicate to their audiences. “The Joy of Reading and Writing” depicts how reading serves as a mechanism to escape the preconceived notions that constrain several groups of people from establishing themselves and achieving success in their lifetimes. “Reading to Write,” on the other hand, offers a valuable advice to aspiring writers. The author suggests that one has to read, read, and read before he or she can become a writer. Moreover, he holds an interesting opinion concerning mediocre writing. He says, “Every book you pick has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones” (p.221). Although these two essays differ in their contents and messages, the authors use the same rhetorical mode to write their essays. Both are process analyses, meaning that they develop their main argument and provide justification for it step by step. By employing this technique, the two authors create essays that are thoughtful, well supported, and easy to understand. In addition, Alexie and King both add a little personal touch to their writings as they include personal anecdotes. This has the effect of providing support for their arguments. Although the two essays have fairly different messages, the authors make use of anecdotes and structure their writing in a somewhat similar
Sherman Alexie, born October 7, 1966, a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian, grew up on a 156,000-acre Spokane Indian reservation in Wellpinit, Eastern Washington State, population: approximately 1000. Alexie was born with hydrocephalus (water in the brain). Medical professionals did not have high hopes for Alexie in belief that he would not have a long future, assuming he would die in surgery. Shockingly, he survived, but he suffered many side affects for most of his childhood such as seizures, bedwetting, and an enlarged skull to name a few. Sadly he was made a mockery of. Kids at school called him “the globe” on account of his enlarged skull. However, Alexie found contentment in books. By the time he was 12 he had read every book in the Wellpinit school library (Grassian 2).
He goes through the struggles of deciding who he wants to be and who he is. He lived on a reservation with his family and attended the school there. He decided one day the only way he would go anywhere in life was if he were to attend Reardan, an all-white school. Here, Junior was forced to find who he really was. Junior experienced more struggles and tragedies than any white student at this school. He had to fight through the isolation he first experienced to building up the courage to play in a basketball championship. I believe that every event Junior wrote about throughout the novel had an important purpose, and even more importantly, could be related to sociology. As I read the novel, I constantly thought about questions such as the following: What importance does he have to write about this? Could I relate this to my life? Who is Alexie’s audience? Could anyone read this novel and learn something from it? By the time I completed the novel, I could answer all of these questions without a
In “Superman and Me” Sherman Alexie describes his life as a child on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Alexie also explains his love to read that he acquired from his father’s love of reading and books of all kinds. Alexie followed in the footsteps of his father to be successful in providing himself with a better life. Alexie also mentions how most other Indians were not willing or interested in learning or being educated because it was considered an “oddity” (Page 89). Alexie swAlexie’s main point to his writing was to express his feeling towards reading, learning and the importance of a good education especially for his fellow Indians. Because of his concern to save the lives of his young fellow Indians Alexie describes his experiences visiting the schools.
Sherman alexie is inspired to have a passion and make others have passion the story “Superman & Me”. Sherman alexie found out that “Books have saved his life” after his dad bought a bunch of them. Maybe his dad was trying to give Sherman a new passion and it was to read books because Sherman would be bored and not be as smart as he is right now if he didn't have the books. I have a passion of doing good in school from my mom & dad. So if i do not do good in school i would be like Sherman without books i would be working at a low paying job. Sherman also inspired people, like how he is trying to inspire his classmates to be smarter than the average indian by saying “They wanted me to stay quiet when the non-indian teacher asked for answers,for
“Superman and Me”, is a profound essay written by Sherman Alexie in 1998 discussing the impact reading had on his life. He became motivated to save lives through knowledge, demolish stereotypes surrounding Native Americans, and avoid possible permanent disenfranchisement of his culture. In chronological order he explains from his perspective how difficult and complicated it is to be a Spokane Indian living in America, and how powerful reading can alter your life and create a better future.
The description and detail used in “superman and me” is very clear. Alexis uses this to place to set the tone for the uphill battle he was going to encounter. The reservation Alexis grew up in was a Spokane reservation. In a time period where the white man looked down upon most Indians. The culture of tribe has been forged after repeated cycles of the same thing. The lack of education and growth that prevented them from doing anything significant with their lives. Most of the Spokane were poor and those who could get minimum wage were considered middle class in the tribe. This is where Alexis family was in. The Spokane didn’t push very much for education, but more for working. The kids in school were expected to fail right from the get go. So much so that when the teacher asked a kid a question most would just hold their head
When I began kindergarten , at the age of four, I didn’t know to speak or write the English language. I wanted be one of the few Hispanic student who had the ability to communicate with American children. In “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie, Alexie was an Native American that wanted to develop his education unlike other Indian children. He taught himself to read by reading many books like his father did. Alexie overcame his fears of being differ than the other Native Americans. Learning to read in English has improved the opportunities to a successful education.
In the essay I Just Wanna be Average, Mike Rose talks about how he didn’t really care about school until his later year of school when he was put in smart classes, but it was in Mr. McFarland’s English class that he started reading books after so many years and actually got good grades in his last year of high school. Mr. McFarland inspired Mr. Rose to be a lifelong learner which he actually shaped himself up and when it was time for college registrations he help him get into a good college which now Mr. Rose is using that knowledge to inspire other people and teach them what Mr. McFarland had thought him. In Learning to Read by Malcolm