Superman And Somebody Kept Saying Powwow Summary

Sherman Alexie: Superman and Me and Somebody Kept Saying Powwow
Sherman Alexie is an author that uses his experiences in life living on the reservation as tool to create his stories. Alexie describes the misery, alcoholism and poverty that shaped the lives of Native Americans living on reservations. Alexie writing emulates hatred and sadness but leaves readers with a sense of understanding, and compassion for characters who are portrayed in apparently hopeless circumstances. Alexie’s creations incorporate characters who struggle to survive a constant battle of their spirit, mind and body by White American society that they live in and their own sense of powerlessness and self-hatred of themselves. Through Alexie’s life he strives to be the

best and not being stuck on reservation for the rest of his life, so reading and writing were his tools to escape. Alexie’s writing has been explained of a having irony and his dark humor are often continued by a beautiful sense of timing as key characteristics. Alexie uses different techniques to talk about point of view and themes about Native American lives in the stories Superman and Me and Somebody Kept Saying Powwow.
Superman and Me is a short essay describing how Alexie learned to read even though he ad limited resources on the reservation that he lived on. The story began by telling the reader how he learned to read by using Superman comic book. Alexie would look at the illustrations and assume what the dialogue boxes were saying by the pictures in the book. Alexie mentions that he does not remember the plot of the comic book and this is important because it points out how he used whatever was around him in order to achieve an education despite his educational dilemmas in the reservation. Alexie specifies the fact that growing up on the reservation meant that you were destined to fail due to the lack of white people privilege. Knowing of this stereotype motivated him to excel and that what he did. His father was his example of his drive to read, describing how avid reader his father was and all the novels he had in the house throughout his childhood. Reading and his understanding turned into paragraphs, paragraphs were the fence that held words together, and this delighted him into loving writing even more. Alexie's goes into describing himself in school and how advance he was than the other students in class. Alexie describes how a smart Indian was a dangerous person and how they were looked at in society. He refused to fail, he was intelligent and he knew and was going to show it. After Alexie describes his childhood, he goes into how he goes back to reservation to teach the newer generation about creative writing and how he became an author.
Somebody Kept Saying Powwow is a short story describing the life Norma Many Horses through the eyes of Junior.

Junior idolizes and respects Norma on the reservation and describes how everybody else does as well. Even at her young age, they call her grandmother out of a sign of respect. Norma cares about the tribal traditions and preserving them. She is considered the cultural lifeguard and encourages everyone to go to the powwow and watch the dancing. Junior describes Norma as a great dancer and recalling when he dances the first time with her and then she took him home. Before she was married, she had a reputation for being promiscuous, sleeping with men and women. Junior describes how he believe that Norma was going to end up with someone different because she love helping people and Victor had more problems than anyone in the tribe. Junior describes how he had a dream about her riding horses and did not know what the dream meant and told her about it. Junior goes into when he was in high school, single-handedly won the game for the team and Norma wrote an article about it in the newspaper. Junior describes his life after high school, off the reservation and coming back to talk to Norma about the outside world. Then they go into the conversation of what is the worst thing he ever did and Junior’s answer changed Norma’s opinion of him and for a very long time affected their relationship. Norma gave him the name Pete Rose after the baseball player who is remember for his

gambling problems and not his impressive feats in baseball. Norma thought it was unfair that people only remember the bad things and not the good and forgave Junior but promised she still loves him.
Sherman Alexie beautifully wrote both of these stories that show the struggles and problems of Native Americans have living on the reservation.

His writing style techniques in both stories have a narrative structure, focalization, visual connection, social situation, imagery and themes of personal and collective crisis but a different point of view. Each piece describes the daily life of a Native American living on the reservation including himself, a place where tradition was fading because of the outside world of White Society. The perception of Native Americans provides an inside look at what they thought and how they lived their daily lives. Alexie illustrated the lives on reservations through his writing with the use of literary

languages.

In Superman and Me, he begins with a first person narrative with the use of I and in the middle he changes to third person, “A little Indian boy teaches himself to read….” (Alexie, p. 5) Alexie's uses of rhetorical devices which make his essay appeal to the reader. Those devices included analogies, repetition, and anecdotes. The analogy, “paragraph to a fence,” Alexie provides visual connections in the story that helped him express his moment of epiphany that opened him to the reading world, a perceptive that words "worked together for a common purpose" (Alexie, p. 5). Alexie clarifies his understanding of perception that the reservation was a paragraph within the country, his home, neighborhood and world as paragraphs, and each family member as a separate paragraph yet part of a larger "essay of seven paragraphs" (Alexie, p.5). Alexie’s repetitions in statements of "I am" serve as self-affirmation of how difficult it been to remain self motivated throughout life of an Indian. Alexie's use of repetition successfully shows the returning theme of his desire to succeed. Alexie introduces and reintroduces the phrase, “I was smart. I was arrogant. I was lucky. I was trying to save my life” at two significant moments in the story.
The use of pathos and ethos or his ethical use illustrates what reading did for him and helps the audience understand the constant struggles of an Indian. From this, Alexie establishes his voice and character as someone the audience can relate to and trust. Alexie emphasizes the importance reading played in his life throughout the story. Giving the audience a sense of what Alexie's anecdotes create a connection with the audience that allows him to draw them in more further.
One anecdote in the story is a when he learned to read from a comic book. This anecdote brings to mind sympathy and amazement from the reader because everyone can relate to Superman. Those mix emotions are inspired by the anecdote because even through his depressed situation he becomes successful without the educational resources that white children had when learning to read. With the minimal resources he had, he becomes a successful writer. As the audience you feel some type of sympathy due to his situation. Alexie also uses irony; the fact that he used a comic to learn how to read and becomes a writer amazes the audience and develops a respect for him. Throughout the story, Alexie use of pathos in the story appeals to the reader, and the description of his difficulty on the reservation as an intelligent person strike a heart cord, “A smart Indian is a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and non-Indians alike. We were Indian children who were expected to be stupid.” (Alexie, p. 5)
In the story Somebody Kept Saying Powwow is a third person narrative that uses rhetorical devices such as literal and fugitive images and language, and imagery. Alexie made Junior as the narrator and the focalizer of the story. Junior focus was more on telling Norma story them himself. In the story were admiration of Norma and who she was, he dreamt about her and how he perceived her as. Norma is portrayed as this leader and a pretty persuasive one at that when it comes to keeping the tribal traditions. Alexie tackles issues in story that goes on in the reservation such as alcoholism, dancing, and just a daily struggle.
The story begins with the belief of tradition as rather valuable, even though it becomes aware of how it might be lost, “I knew her back when there was good fry bread to be eaten at the powwow, before the old women died and took their recipes with them. That’s how it’s going” (Alexie, p.270) Norma is the one who passionately keeps the traditional values and “Was always trying to save it, she was a cultural lifeguard, watching out for those of us that were so close to drowning” (270). Alexie managed to incorporate positive things in the American society in the story, “She didn’t drink or smoke. But she could spend a night in the Powwow Tavern and dance hard. She could dance Indian and white. And that’s a mean feat, since the two methods of dancing are mutually exclusive” (270). These images both have a literal and figurative meaning to them. In the story, the focus moves that there is a clear anger of some modern American values in the story and an acceptance of Native Americans, example is fancy dancing to the White music and the view of homosexuality. Alexie use imagery was profound, the way that Native Americans shook hands then White America, reservation antennas, the drunken Indian, Junior’s dream about Norma and when Junior told Norma what he did in College. Even though the story had it humor, bumps, and rollercoaster ride it had a positive ending with Norma speaking to Junior again referencing him to the baseball player Pete Rose. Alexie left an important message at the end, that people should not just reminder the bad in the person but also the good because the good always outweighs the bad at the end.
Alexie writing connects to the audience and evokes emotions when reading the story. Alexie uses humor, exaggeration and stereotypes to make reality more pleasant, he creates a social awareness, one whose humorous perspective and harsh representation of reality. The main theme to Superman and Me was determination, even though he was born in a life of obstacles he strived to advance and excel in life. The theme for Somebody Kept Saying Powwow was forgiveness and tradition that even though the world around us is changing that we should not and remember our roots. With the different writing techniques Alexie had similar themes depicting the tradition and the lives of Native Americans on the reservations.