Humor In Sherman Alexie's 'Smoke Signals'

Sherman Alexie uses humor as a way to connect his stories with the readers. In one of his interviews the famous writer says "I think being funny breaks down barriers between people"(Nygren 299). It is easy for one to infer that humor is not necessarily added into his stories to make the audience laugh, but to make a sort of crude emphasis to what Sherman Alexie is trying to state with his writings. In other words, one could look at Sherman Alexie's work as ice cream, and at the humor like its cherry. Without the cherry, ice cream for most people remains to be a good dessert, but the cherry is that finishing detail that makes of that particular ice cream something more special. This is what Sherman Alexie does with his work. He tops the story with a cherry to make sure that it gets through its audience. …show more content…
A lot of humor is found in scenes such like the one where Victor tries to teach Thomas how to behave like a “real Indian”, or at least what Victor was taught a real Indian should look like. Already knowing Sherman Alexie’s work, the audience should immediately know that one will always be left with, as written in Georges Dillon’s essay – “Styles of Reading”, a “Diggers for Secrets” – spot. It becomes your job to dig into the story to understand the purpose of Sherman Alexie’s decision to add some crude humor from time to time. It does not matter what kind of reader a person is, when it comes to Sherman Alexie, a reader should always look for dots to connect throughout the