The Lone Ranger And Tonto Fistfight In Heaven Summary

Journal Eight Sherman Alexie uses many interesting features to make the interconnected short stories in his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven more thought-provoking and charismatic. Such features include a blend of reality and fantasy, humor and seriousness, and truth and memory. Throughout the book we get many stories that are fantastical versions of the harsh realities of life as a Native American. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is a book that tells uncensored truths of an oppressed and suffering community with a comical twist of fictional experiences. Alexie writing serves as a poetic, humorous, and entertaining description of the hardships and actualities of Native Americans. Although the stories being told are surreal enough to not be literal …show more content…
Though most of the stories focus on Victor or other male characters, I found one of the more interesting chapters to be one that centered around a female. The chapter entitled “The Fun House” centers around a woman on the reservation, Victor’s Aunt Nezzy. This chapter has fascinating imagery, one of the most interesting being Nezzy’s swim in the creek. Water is often times is a symbol of rebirth or cleansing, and I think that representation holds true in this story. After an incident with her husband and son, Nezzy goes to a creek near her home and swims while she “chanted at them,” and did not leave the water until the sun had gone down. I do not believe this is a description of an actual physical event, but a spiritual one. I see the swim as representing a washing away of previous sufferings and coming back stronger than before, more capable than ever to hold the weight of her struggles. We can see this when, after a tiring swim, she came back, put on a heavy dress that she had sewn and “she heard drums, she heard singing, she