Violence In Reservation Blues

Thomas C. Foster explains in Chapter 6 that religion is always tied into books and stories. No matter how unrelated religion may seem it’s always in there, just not in the way you expect it to be. The author may not stand before you and part the Red Sea however Foster says “Many modern and postmodern texts are essentially ironic, in which the allusions to biblical sources are used not to heighten continuities between the religious tradition and the contemporary moment but to illustrate a disparity or disruption.” Page 47 In Reservation Blues it shows religious traditions and disruption through religion. While boarding a plane for the first time to meet some record producers, Victor is extremely frightened. Victor has a little bit of an aviophobia

problem that had been introduced at that moment.Thomas does his best to offer his comfort and said to Victor “I brought an eagle feather for protection. You can have it.” However Victor was not pleased with this old Spokane indian religious tradition that is supposed to offer protection, strength and a sense of comfort. Victor responded with “Get that indian bullshit away from me!” Page 218. Luckily they were able to convince Victor to get on the plane by offering him plenty of alcohol so that he was drunk the rest of the trip, however didn’t cause any commotion. Now before every new chapter Foster had put a song that dealt with the plot in some way. There was one particular song whos first verse was truly put the indians traditions against Jesus and the disruption that it caused. The first line says, “my braids were cut off in the name of jesus, to make me look so white.” For indians there hair was huge for them. for indian men their hair is a tribal religious symbol/ tradition that teaches them that their hair is to only be cut when mourning a death of a close relative. There hair was essentially their sixth sense and not to be cut. When the singers hair is cut the singer says it was to make them look like a white person. To strip the singer of her indian roots which happened a lot with military haircuts when whites were ransacking indian tribes. The singer says that this was done all in the name of Jesus. This was done all because of the “white people religion” and their disruption from the two traditions and religions presented itself to start embedding the indian vs Jesus conflict.

Foster has a chapter ( chapter 11) all about violence and it most definetliy the most frequently referred to chapter in Reservation Blues.

Foster says that violence is “One of the most personal and even intimate acts between human beings. “ Page 95 The author of Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexia uses so much violence however in different ways. The first way was like how Foster said it was personal. Chess was having a nightmare and in the dream she witnessed a soldier attacking an unpainted indian. “A soldier lunged forward with his bayonet and speared the unpainted one once, twice, three times. The indians gasped as the unpainted one fell to the ground, critically wounded.” Page 85 In the beginning of the dream there had originally been another indian who had started the commotion. Indians were often rash and not only seen as violent however when angry they WERE violent. The soldier was stepping in to “help” the best he could. This dream was personal to Chess because the violence in her dream was a simple way of recalling her father who was not only an indian but often angry and violent because of his large alcohol intake. However Alexie does not stop there. Alexia brings the reader into a more intimate relationship with the characters by describing the fighting and murder of a young indian boy and there horses. In short a young indian was shot from his mount and fell dead and then shortly afterward they shot his horse as well who also died from the bullet. Where it gets

intimate is when it describes junior personally. It said “One soldier walked over to juniors pony, placed a pistol carefully between its eyes, and pulled the trigger. The horse took a long time to fall.” Page 143 Alexie brought the detail and murder into a much closer relationship so that you feel connected to what is going on and the devastation that junior is feeling at that moment.

It seems like everything ends with sex and Reservation Blues is no different.

Foster explains how sex in chapter 16 is always tied up with something else. Foster says “Cover for espionage,personal sacrifice, pychological neediness, desire for power over someone else.” Page 155 in Reservation Blues there is an example of pychological neediness when checkers dreams of Father Arnold coming into her room. She definetly lets her imagination wander to the point where it was “Father dropped his robe to the floor. Naked. Checkers studied him.” Page 155 And from there on you can imagine how her dream went on, more graphic and more imaginative. Chess explained how Checkers always sought for a relationship with older men and not men closer to her age. Her phychological neediness of THIS kind of attention is easily explained by the bad relationship she had with her father. When Checkers has a dream where she raped her, theres much more to the scene. First of all it was really like her personal sacrifice because she felt like she was giving in and giving up a part of her. However how it is written is just like Fosters chapter everything except sex, where it tells you what is happening however skips over it at the same time. Checkers describes the dream with the words, “ Those men, those ghosts, crawled into her bed at night, lifted her nightgown, and forced her legs apart. After they finished with her, those indian men sat on the edge of the bed and cried.” Page 114 It was really

intriguing to see how Alexie described Checkers like an object that wasnt even human after she was raped. Even more that the rapists felt some kind of remorse. Its definitly not the typical approach on writing a scene like that. Like you are against the victim, however he did it in such a way that it didn’t make him look brutal. It just made him look like he was telling the story and not apart of the story. However, every author is part of the story.