The past makes the present and the present makes the upcoming future. In the short story, “This is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” by Sherman Alexie, there are two main characters, Victor and Thomas Builds-the –Fire, and their identities represent the past and present lives for what they think it is right or wrong. Victor and Thomas Builds-the-Fire are friends of each other, but they did not get together until Victor’s father died in Phoenix, Arizona from Spoke, Washington where they lived. In the Spoke, Washington there is a reservation where they live and they start their story that those two characters have opposite identities, each of them and those different identities that help each other throughout the story and have a deeper …show more content…
Their identity has meaning of life and death. The identities that both Victor and Thomas hold contain a meaning of life and death that it needed for discovering a new future for them, also Victor and Thomas described the cycle of life and death while they discussed each other about before they toss Victor’s Father’s ashes into the water.
Thomas Builds-the-Fire’s identity is a storyteller, but inside meaning of storyteller Thomas represents the traditional character who reminisce the past and lost traditions. Thomas’s name describes that he is born to be a storyteller because while building the fire people usually talk about old stories from the past, but people from the past believed the storytellers when they talk about the future or what people can do. Thomas thought of crazy things for telling his endless stories,
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This makes Victor to be a modern character who only think about himself. Victor did something only if it might help his future and get benefit from something he think it is good. Victor’s father had a savings account that is waiting to be collected, so Victor tried to get his father’s account and he prepared to go to Phoenix, Arizona where father died (Alexie, 21). Money symbolizes Victor’s selfishness and negative feelings. Victor does not think about others, but he only thinks about himself, and has negative thoughts while he lives his life. Victor represents the modern people because people from the present always think about themselves and does not care about the past, so money that victor’s father had was very important to Victor to live his life. Victor said to Thomas that he will pay the money back, but he does not want to give the money from his father’s account to Thomas. After they retrieved, Victor gave half of his father’s ashes to Thomas (Alexie, 30). Victor’s father’s ash symbolizes the friendship between Victor and Thomas because they both have memories with Victor’s father and they both want to toss his ashes into the water. They both wanted to do same thing, but their meanings are different. Victor thinks negative ways about toss his father’s ashes into water and described that letting things go after they stopped having any use (Alexie, 30).
Victor had a tough relationship with his father and it becomes even worse as it gets. The more his dad was drinking,
In the film Smoke Signals, the director Chris Eyre shows the audience how story telling played an essential role in Native American culture. Throughout the movie, Thomas is always telling stories with passion and humor, which Victor hates due to the fact that most of the stories were good memories with Thomas and Victors father. Being that Victor and his mom were abused and abandoned by their father when Victor was young, therefore he had mixed feelings about his father. However, the movie would not have been the same without the story telling of Thomas. In This is What It
The imagery of fire continues in the story; the building of their fires, how the man molds the fires, and how they stoke the fire. When the boy gets sick the father is referred to many times of how he builds and rekindles the fire. This actual fire is a symbol for the fire that the man and the boy discuss carrying within in them. The man fights to save his son and the fire within the boy
In “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix Arizona”, Victor has become psychologically troubled because he has put his own traditions behind. Throughout the story, the readers find out that Victor has an internal conflict due to the unhealthy relationships in his life. His father abandons him at a very young age, which causes Victor’s loss of guidance and self-identity. The day that Victor’s father abandons his family, Victor gets “really drunk and beat[s] Thomas up for no apparent reason at all”(276). If no one would have stopped Victor, Thomas-build-the-fire would have died which clearly shows the readers that Victor is mentally troubled. Not only does he lose his father but, Victor also loses his best friend on that same day. In other words, Victor is mentally traumatized after the abandonment. In fact, Rothe Eugenio, a professor in the department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Health at Florida Inter...
Through connecting with his former best friend, Victor was able travel to Phoenix to reclaim his father’s ashes and belongings. During the trip we see Thomas and Victor reminisce about their former days as friends, and although at the end they both agreed that they could not be friends, they gained a deeper understanding of each other. Even though Victor could not say it, deep down, he knew that his best friend was in fact Thomas.
Victor grows up in school both on the American Indian Reservation, then later in the farm town junior high. He faces serious discrimination at both of these schools, due to his Native American background. This is made clear in both of the schools by the way the other students treat him as well as how his teachers treat him. His classmates would steal his glasses, trip him, call him names, fight him, and many other forms of bullying. His teachers also bullied him verbally. One of his teachers gave him a spelling test and because he aced it, she made him swallow the test. When Victor was at a high school dance and he passed out on the ground. His teacher approached him and the first thing he asked was, “What’s that boy been drinking? ...
“This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona” discusses the physical and mental journey of Victor, a Native American man in the state of Washington, as he goes to Phoenix, Arizona to claim his father’s remains and his savings account. While on this journey, Victor learns about himself, his father, and his Indian culture with the help of his estranged friend, Thomas Builds-the–Fire. The author, Sherman Alexie, plays on the stereotypes of Native Americans through the characters of Victor and Thomas. While Thomas is portrayed as the more traditional and “good” Native American, Victor comes across as the “bad” Native American. Through the use of this binary relationship, Alexie is able to illustrate the transformation of these characters as they reconcile with each other, and break out of these stereotypes in the process.
Victor’s father left his family because according to Thomas, “when they were seven years old, when Victor’s father still lived with the family, Thomas closed his eyes and told Victor this story: your father’s heart is weak. He is afraid of his own family, he is afraid of you. Late at night he sits in the dark. Watches the television until there’s nothing but white noise. Sometimes he feels like he wants to buy a motorcycle and ride away. He wants to run and hide. He doesn’t want to be found” (512). When Victor’s father left, he never truly forgave him. Readers know that because of the details told at the beginning of the story and through the quote that was used in the second paragraph. Although he felt some resentment towards his father, he still felt obligated to bring him back to the reservation. That is where the theme of family comes into the story. Victor’s father died in his hot trailer and was not found for at least a week. Victor knew the trailer his father was staying had to have smelt ripe. But he did not care, as explained in the story, he says,“but there might be something valuable in there and I was talking about pictures and letters and stuff like that” (515). The trip that Victor made to Phoenix was a family journey. That long trip had taught Victor about himself and most importantly about his father. The grief that was bottled up inside was finally being put to rest now
Everything starts to change once Victors ambitions become his life. He leaves to study at Ingolstadt, where his destiny begins to unfold. This is when Victor’s isolation begins. The search for the secrets of life consumes him for many years until he thinks he has found it. For months, he assembles what he needs for his creation to come alive.
evil; while Victor acts out of greed. Victor’s self-centered behavior effects everyone in the novel; he hurts his family’s
In life, one goes through different experiences which makes and shapes us into the person who we become. Whether something as little as a "hello" by a crush or a death in a family, they contribute to the difference, as they are all equal in importance. In the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, the protagonist Hamlet struggles throughout his life as he is in search of his true identity. The Webster's dictionary, under the second definition, defines identity as "The set of behavioral or personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group." As life only moves forward for Hamlet, he struggles to find his place in life, nonetheless to revenge the murder of his father.
Victor’s initial isolation as a child foreshadows the motif of detachment that occurs throughout the novel. As Victor Frankenstein recounts his informative tale to a seafaring Robert Walton, he makes it known that he was a child of nobility; however it is sadly transparent that combined with insufficient parenting Victor’s rare perspective on life pushes him towards a lifestyle of conditional love. Children are considered symbolic of innocence but as a child Victor’s arrogance was fueled by his parents. With his family being “one of the most
Thomas is a hero because the second is that he follows the hero’s journey like ordeal, Death, and Rebirth. The elevator comes back up with a girl and some pipes filled with something and the girl makes Thomas remember more about himself. Later on, they use the needle on Alby and it heals him but he won't speak. Then later on, when its night, the doors don’t close and the grievers start coming and killing people. This is a wake-up call for Thomas that and some people else since Alby is dead by the grievers. Thomas takes the lead to get out of the maze and some people follow him like a leader. When Thomas says something to the people that are left in the glade it sparks something a leadership role for Thomas. “We can't stay here forever.” When Thomas says this to the glade the people are deciding is it ok to break the rules that they have followed for years and go into the maze to try and find a way out with Thomas leading them. In This Ordeal, Death and Rebirth people die yes but Thomas did become more of a leader of the effects that played
Zadie Smith’s White Teeth epigraph “What is past is prologue,” means that what has occurred in the past has led up to what is happening in the future or present. Smith illustrates the struggles three families go through for identity, legacy, striving for a good future while holding onto the traditions of the past, and maintaining ones religion or beliefs. Through the text, the thematic significance of the past occurs often with the recurring flashbacks which sometimes goes as far back to 1857; with Samad’s mutinous great-grandfather and 1907 with Irie’s past about her great-grandmother and white colonial great-grandfather.
"The Story of an Hour" and "To Build a Fire" both concern different types of conflict. 'Person vs self' and 'person vs nature' are the two main conflicts that are discussed. Both of which reveal hidden characteristics and traits of the characters. It may seem as if both the stories are polar opposites, one regarding feelings and the other regarding adventure, yet they are quite alike holding similar morals. Even though the stories date back approximately a hundred years ago, much of it is still relevant even today.