What You Pawn I Will Redeem Summary

In the short story “What You Pawn, I Will Redeem”, Sherman Alexie argues that people want to fit in and belong in society because all humans have the drive to be a part of something. There are many ways that people try to fit in the world, but Jackson Jackson has a strange technique. Jackson is on a quest to find $999 to buy back a regalia that was stolen from his grandmother fifty years ago. He goes on an adventure that is like a roller coaster, Jackson continuously gets sums of money and then spends it on others in the town. Jackson has eighty dollars and go to a bar, “All right,” I said. “Me and all my cousins here are going to be drinking eighty shots. How many is that apiece?”(Alexie 8). Since the beginning of the story, Jackson has spent his money to provide joy for not only himself but others. He does not save up any of the money he earns or receives …show more content…
He had a great time talking to them and even had some sexual action with Irene. A few hours after all of the fun Jackson asks the bartender, “Where’d they go?” in which the bartender responds with, “I told you a hundred time, I don’t know”(Alexie 10). Jackson asked the bartender several times, wanting to know where his new friends are because he thought he has made some new friends. All Jackson wanted for himself were companions, he roamed the streets of his town and kept on moving without someone by his side the entire way there. As the story progresses I start to see that Jackson Jackson is quite lonely, he is a homeless man without any family and most of his friends left or died. Whenever he gets close to being a part of something, that something disappears. Through this loneliness, depression is created and through that he most likely started bad habits, such as drinking and smoking. In the end Jackson wasn’t with anyone physically, but spiritually he was with his grandmother, his