Sherman Alexie’s “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” is a 1993 short story that looks into the life of a Native American man who is depressed after a failed relationship with a white woman in Seattle. Now living alone in the Spokane Indian Reservation, the narrator feels haunted by his past and affects him in daily interactions. The majority of the narrator’s views are negative and his own race is seen as divided from America, even when Native American home is America the narrator does not feel like he belongs. Sherman Alexie distinguishes the narrator in order for readers to understand who the narrator is and why the narrator is depressed in the story with point of view—the narrator’s perception of others and their own onto his
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Alexie applies character in his story to tell readers the experiences a native American man has in daily life because of race. Alexie’s narrator comments on how the old Indian saying, “Indians can reside in the city, but they can never live there” being his truth in life that definitively leads him back home (405). Even when the narrator unites himself to his race it detaches him away from any other person and secludes himself as strictly what his race is, including stereotypes. When being pulled over by a police officer after driving around a nice residential neighborhood, the narrator wants to say that his own race does not fit the profile of the nation and it suggests that his own self does not belong in the entire country because of his Native American trait. While associating oneself with their race is what makes a person feel more whole, it has a contradictory effect for the narrator. The author elaborates the narrator’s race as a way of showing readers how one’s race affect’s a person’s identity. The narrator’s character ties on to being Native American and it creates a linear view of himself to feeling distant from strangers and from America, because of that characterization of himself does the narrator have a sense of solitude in the story that readers can …show more content…
Sherman Alexie personifies the narrator with the perception of others and the narrator’s own sensitivity of self, through the narrator’s identity as a Native American man detached from the nation, and going through the majority of the narrator’s own thoughts being mostly negative but still looking for a light for himself. In the end, the narrator wants to not be lonely and knows it will take a long time to do, but still held back by his own negative point of view and character identity as a Native American man. Sherman Alexie creates a three-dimensional individual readers can come closer to interpretation by the end of “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” by seeing who the narrator’s character is in his point of view with the support of Alexie’s style choices to highlight the character’s
Alexie applies character in his story to tell readers the experiences a native American man has in daily life because of race. Alexie’s narrator comments on how the old Indian saying, “Indians can reside in the city, but they can never live there” being his truth in life that definitively leads him back home (405). Even when the narrator unites himself to his race it detaches him away from any other person and secludes himself as strictly what his race is, including stereotypes. When being pulled over by a police officer after driving around a nice residential neighborhood, the narrator wants to say that his own race does not fit the profile of the nation and it suggests that his own self does not belong in the entire country because of his Native American trait. While associating oneself with their race is what makes a person feel more whole, it has a contradictory effect for the narrator. The author elaborates the narrator’s race as a way of showing readers how one’s race affect’s a person’s identity. The narrator’s character ties on to being Native American and it creates a linear view of himself to feeling distant from strangers and from America, because of that characterization of himself does the narrator have a sense of solitude in the story that readers can …show more content…
Sherman Alexie personifies the narrator with the perception of others and the narrator’s own sensitivity of self, through the narrator’s identity as a Native American man detached from the nation, and going through the majority of the narrator’s own thoughts being mostly negative but still looking for a light for himself. In the end, the narrator wants to not be lonely and knows it will take a long time to do, but still held back by his own negative point of view and character identity as a Native American man. Sherman Alexie creates a three-dimensional individual readers can come closer to interpretation by the end of “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” by seeing who the narrator’s character is in his point of view with the support of Alexie’s style choices to highlight the character’s