Formula / Text Explorations for Sherman Alexie

3/9 Text Explorations / Formula

Cale Houghton

Period 5 Literature of the Americas

Formula:

Status Quo - Many people who have never been on reservations know very little about Native Americans. All they know is that Native Americans are mostly poor and have alcohol problems. So a Native American author would want to get rid of these negative stereotypes.

Trouble - The characters in Sherman Alexie’s story fit that stereotype exactly. They are lazy, poor and former alcoholics.

Question: If people already have bad preconceptions of Native Americans, but Native American authors just enforce those stereotypes, what do they want to gain from going along with the what people already think?

Claim: I don’t think “people” who will judge that Native Americans based off of a book are meant to be the audience. I think that Alexie writes this story for people on the rez. He wants to show kids on the rez that they have to step up in order for the rez to have hope.

Bold = Unpack

Text Explorations:

“But I used to be quite the ball player. Maybe not as good as some, certainly not as good as Julius, but I still felt that ache1 in my bones, that need to be better than everyone else. It’s that need to be the best, the feeling of immortality2, that drives a ball player. And when it disappears3, for whatever reason4, that ballplayer is never the same person, on or off the court,” (Alexie, 46).

1. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ache as, ache: a continuous or prolonged dull pain. So Victor feels this continuous pain, to play basketball. This is troubling because he never did  play basketball since the last game. So if it pains him to not go and play basketball, why doesn’t he just do it?

2. Immortality: The condition of being celebrated through all time; enduring fame or remembrance. So he felt like he would never be forgotten when he was a kid, before the championship. This is ironic, because everyone before him was forgotten. Everybody to ever try has failed, but he doesn’t even pay attention to them, and he ends up making the same mistakes. Maybe this connects to the message he is trying to send to kids on the rez. He is saying to learn from others mistakes.
3. How this feeling of immortality disappears is kind of similar what to I said above. Everybody else to ever try to get out of the rez eventually lost it all of a sudden, because they go “bad”. But the word disappears makes it sound like all of a sudden they couldn’t play basketball.
4. I think its interesting how he says “whatever reasons”. Because it seems like all the Native Americans don’t make it because of how they think they are immortal. But at the same time, he and his team lost it at a random time. They were just in the locker room, and suddenly they all started freaking out. He missed every shot.

“‘Shit, they1 better fix it. Might cause an accident.’

We both looked at each other, looked at the traffic signal, knew that about only one car an hour passed by, and laughed our asses off2. Laughed so hard that when we tried to rearrange ourselves, Adrian ended up with my ass and I ended up with his. That looked so funny that we laughed them off again and it took us most of an hour to get them back on again3,” (Alexie, 48).

1. I think it’s very interesting that Adrian uses the word “they”. As I have learned in Latin, “they” is 3rd person, so it involves someone outside the conversation. So Adrian is saying that neither him or Victor will ever fix the signal. That’s funny, because they are the ones who complain about boredom. But they don’t fix their problems. Victor and Adrian leave their problems to “they”. But who is “they”? No one really, because no one will ever fix the stop light. So in a way I think that Alexie is saying that no one will fix your problems, if you don’t fix them yourselves.
2. I think that this is how Alexie makes the serious into a joke. I think that this is a further example of how this is aimed at people on the rez. He tries to make how they will never fix the light a joke, even though it just goes to show that they have no one taking responsibility. He obviously would not want an outsider to think that rez problems were a joke, but he might want to amuse someone in the rez.
3. Now it is almost as if he is toying with the reader, and he does this a lot within the text. Another time he does this is pretending he has 4 arms. Why does he do this? It disorients the reader a lot. It doesn’t seem like he cares about the reader at this point, he just wants to write. Or maybe it just seems like that to me, because I am not the target of the story.

“By the fourth quarter, Julius sat at the end of the bench, hanging his head1, and the crowd filed out, all talking about which of the younger players looked good2. We talked about some kid named Lucy in the third grade who already had a nice move or two3,” (Alexie, 51).

1. This part is kind of similar to what happened to Victor. Julius just cracked all of a sudden. It took the span of a day, and after this he just gets drunk around the rez. Both of them snap in a matter of minutes. I know that before this, they both thought that they were invincible, making stupid mistakes. But at the time that they snapped, they weren’t necessarily making a dumb mistake. Maybe the reason they snapped all of a sudden was because they came to realize that they were turning out the same way everybody did. Victor lost it when he was looking at pictures of people all dying in horrible accidents. Maybe he connected all the people dying over and over again to the rez heroes not making it again and again.
2. It amazes me how quick they moved on. Julius had been the coolest kid on the rez, but in an instant, they had moved on. They are as quick at moving on to another hero as Julius is to become mortal. It shows how the older people in the rez have seen it so many times that they know what is going to happen, even if the kids think they are invincible.
3. It seems like they are putting a lot of pressure on the reservation heroes that they choose. Lucy is only in third grade, but everybody is counting on her. It seems like they do that for all the other rez heroes as well. Everybody in the town counts on them to succeed. It’s also kind of continuing the loop of the reservation. As soon as one hero is done, they move on to the next one, whom they have been observing from a far. They don’t expect anybody to make it outside the rez.