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Sherman Alexie is a poet and a novelist and his works were presented on the side of white liberalism. The novel “The Toughest Indian in the World” is one of his brilliant works that demonstrates the stories about the Indians encompassing their street fighters, urban and reservation, husbands and wives. Alexie insisted that white people are complicated as the novel combines the deft psychological realism with the narrative logic that can be found in dreams. The novel offers various themes as it denies the power to disturb.
The story includes the world’s perspectives on various Native American characters that it assimilates the story of interracial couple who tried to wade on societal pressures and cultural differences in rediscovering their love for one another. The novel includes controversial subjects like sexuality and race and it is all presented in clear demonstrations.
Theme of the Novel
“The Toughest Indian in the World” is a story with adult version of gender confusion, stereotypical behavior, and loneliness and it depicts the reaction of the protagonist as it strikes a note of reality.
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The story touches a great deal about prejudices and preconceptions. The story explores on the terrain of intimate relationships and reservation life without falling to sentimentality. The novel blends the surreal situations and it focuses on the tensions between the whites and Indians in intimate relationships.
Significance of the Novel
The novel covers the lives of the Indians in urban areas as they are considered as underrepresented population wherein most Native Americans grew up in reservations.
The novel reveals the real issue on Indian’s relationship to the country that was colonized.
The novel is all about search for identity, regardless of ethnicity as every immigrant is trying to find sense of belongingness. The novel highlights the struggles, issues on ethnic identity, and their sexuality. The story illustrates that Indians are indigenous to their country and in searching for their immigrant identity. The tension arises between the Indians and whites in the urban and Indians maintains their reservations. Significant numbers of Indians live in urban areas but nobody is writing about them.
Most of the Native Americans grew on reservations and most of their works are all about reservation. Indian relationship with their country is one of the broken treaties and it raised issue about sovereignty. The novel encouraged Native Americans on how to present themselves as Indians to the whites and with the other Indians. The novel awakens most of the Native Americans as it depicts racial and cultural conflicts and most often cast in sexual relationships. It demonstrates how the Native Americans were affected by different racial and cultural backgrounds of men and women.
The novel is a collection of short stories that uses stereotypes of modern Indians and it illustrates several points that includes vast array of situations. It has multiple allusions, complex characters, rebellious theme and heartbreaking stories of American Indians as they hold down jobs and fall in and out of love. The story transplanted from the reservation to the city picks up a hitchhiker. The novel is a moving story that employs symbolism that constructs sorrowful events. It deals with urban Indians and their intimate but indigent life on reservation. It is a strange story with the existence of hostile white middle class. The characters were developed and it depicts sexual relationships.
Alexie’s book entitled “The Toughest Indian in the World”, the story depicted the power including the grace of the Indian reporter who was able to cope and live with the world of white that creates difficulty in terms of respect and understanding. Another book that is similar to this is entitled “Assimilation” wherein Alexie was able to reunite with the past and to hook up with Lummi boxer to be itinerant. These are the stories leaving the impression considerably lasting and touching with many viewers.
Being an Indian is a hard experience because stories like these were able to render such people’s anguish fate with their inability in forgetting that the real fact of being Indians, but still keeping the knowledge that peace do exist as well as the love and safety. Alexie also became an inspiration to many viewers and readers in order to be themselves and continue to create stories that may absolutely be considered worthy. “The Toughest Indian in the World”, the American Indians were comparatively different from those kinds of Indians as rarely seen in literature like for instance paying bills, keeping their jobs and those who fall in or even fall out of the most experienced love.
Alexie was successful in terms of depicting the acceptable changes that may happen between the Native Americans and White Americans wherein in the story, “The Toughest Indian in the World”, the said characters from backgrounds were able to investigate of being Indian from the identities of non-Indian such as family context, the conflict happened in intercultural, the love and including death.
The Indian journalist was able to transplant from the city’s reservation to pick up the hitchhiker popularly known as Lummi boxer in order to look and even take the world’s toughest Indian. In addition, the story also provide with the reality in race and sex that the conflicts in racism and culture are definitely happening more specifically in sexual relationships. The issue of escalation, the confusion between lovers was often the disagreements that may be encountered.
As observed, the tensions among urban Indians and those Reserved Indians are also one of the issues that Alexie was able to touch on. As a whole, “The Toughest Indian in the World” is a story that is known as the sugar-coated and at the same time truth-tonic and the characters are said to be recognizable with sympathy but real and human. Compared to many works made by Alexie, the stories he wrote were inspired by the actual experiences from his life. There are many hardships that Native Americans faced and still facing because they are considered Native Americans and always discriminated as what Alexie’s father agony with regards to reservation.
The same concept of another’s work made by Alexie is entitled “Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star-Spangled Banner' at Woodstock" (Alexie,1993), this is more on a description of relationships particularly reservation. As stated one of the biggest problems is the so-called alcoholism encountered in reservations while both parents of Victor, the main character in this setting are said to be heavy drinkers.
This is in comparison with the modern marriages among the Native-American in connection with reservation to the tradition of marriages with Native-American. As reviewed from the past, the Indian marriage was said to be easily broken because of the usual scenario that woman or man packed up all the possessions and even left. The Native-Americans may become focused on such physical survival as well as cultural. The marriage of Native-American in modern times deteriorates and became more painful and even destructive.
Reference
“The Toughest Indian in the World, by Sherman Alexie”. From The Internet Explorer Web site.
22 May 2008. < http://partners.nytimes.com/books/first/a/alexie-toughest.html >
The Toughest Indian in the World. (2017, Mar 20). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/the-toughest-indian-in-the-world-essay
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