Group Project

C. Use a variety of resources to educate readers about American Indian literature, its history and the major critical issues in order to provide a context for reading our two books.  Consider creating a timeline with information and links. Maybe deal with Nativism, Postmodernism, gender, colonization, and so on. Use the web’s linking abilities to put users in touch with electronically reachable sources.  Include an intro to your pages. Add images and otherwise use visual resources to make the site attractive and engaging.

I think that option C looks the most interesting to me.  I was unaware of anything in the Native American culture until I took this class and from what I have learned, I think that I could do a good job with this option.  Also, I think that doing this option will allow me to learn even more about the Native American culture because it requires a lot of research.  It  would be fun to learn about the different events and critical issues of Native Americans.  Using the two novels that we read and the articles that we found, we could make a lot of good points about all of the issues Native Americans have gone through.

Annotated bib- TLRATFIH

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is a novel by Sherman Alexie comprised of many short stories explaining the culture of the Spokane Indians.  Alexie uses humor to allow for the novel to be more enjoyable.  Some say that Sherman Alexie’s use of humor is a way of depicting the Native Americans in a negative way.  Critics argue that it is demeaning and offensive to many people of Native American decent.  The articles found below are about the white people’s depiction of Native American culture relating to The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.  They are about the different ways that Sherman Alexie uses humor to incorporate an understanding of Native American culture and the Spokane tribe in his novel.  The “white” depictions in the novel are that the Indians are drunken and very lazy people.  There are even some critics that have said they are presented as people with no purpose and people to be laughed at.  The story in the novel, “Amusements” does not help this argument at all because it is about a man who was drunk and his friends put him on an amusement ride and watched him roll around on the ride while people laughed at him.  I do not believe that Alexie did this to makea claim that Indians are just a bunch of drunks.  He thought that it was humorous so he decided to write about it.  These articles give a great outlook on the different ways of looking at The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.

 

Dix, Andrew.  “Escape Stories: Narratives and Native Americans in Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.”  The Yearbook of English Studies 31. (2001): 155-167. JSTOR. Ohio University, Alden Lib. 17 May 2009.

 

            This article is an argument that that The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven is actually a story of many different voices including Sherman Alexie’s own.  It is an article comparing the works of Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller.  It is explained that the the authors have a different way of conveying their culture to one another. Silko is more constant and Alexie’s is more controlled.  Dix claimed that Alexie’s works are incomplete and unfulfilled.  Dix also claims that Alexie’s short stories are pretty suggestive because of the fact that he chooses to use short stories instead of an entire story.  He goes on to compare the two big characters in the stories, Thomas-Builds-the-Fire and the woman in Storyteller.  He comments on the fact that Alexie’s novel was categorized as a social embarrassment.  The story is now a controversy between the white and Native American disposition.  Dix talks of the value of the culture in “A Drug Called Tradition.”  This story helps explain the traditions of the Spokane tribe.

 

Carroll, Kathleen.  “Ceremonial Tradition as Form and Theme in Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven: A Performance-Based Approach to Native American Literature.”  The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 38 (2005):  74-84. JSTOR. Ohio University, Alden Lib. 17 May 2009.

 

            This article by Kathleen Carroll speaks of how students read about the white depiction of Native Americans.  She talks of how a person must be careful when watching the movie because it focusing more on an individualistic nature instead of a group or tribe.  She claims that the idea of American writers is to try and reestablish and new tradition of learning and to try and unlearn a certain stereotype about different cultures or people.  Carroll says that The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven is a way to overturn the white stereotype of the Indian and get their heritage back.  She discusses the graphics of the cover of the novel and explains what everything means and I did not realize that everything on the cover represents something else.  She explains that the orange color and the fire represent the burning of the Indians by the white people.  Carroll speaks of the story of “The Trial of Thomas Builds-the-Fire and claims that it draws the Indians to tears.  This article predominately speaks of the different short stories in the novel and how they relate to the “white” descriptions of the Spokane tribe.

 

Slethaug, Gordon.  “Hurricanes and Fires: Chaotics in Sherman Alexie's Smoke Signals and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven." Literature Film Quarterly 31. (2003): 1-13.  EBSCOhost.  Ohio University, Alden Lib. 17 May 2009.

           

This article speaks of the ways to depict Native Americans in both The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and “Smoke Signals.”  The film gives a very serious feel to the book.  In comparing the two, a person starts to feel very sorry for Thomas Build-the-Fire in the movie more than in the book.  Both the movie and the novel have a feeling of humor and enjoyment but the film makes a person feel bad for Victor and Thomas.  This article speaks of the importance of weather in both the novel and the book and shows how nature and weather are very important in the Spokane tribe and for most Native Americans.  Slethaug speaks of the significance of “Every Little Hurricane.” He speaks of how the hurricane represents everything that when on in the New Year’s party including his two uncles fighting and his parents passing out from alcohol.  Slethaugh also speaks of the story “The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Won’t Flash Red Anymore.”  He speaks of the different ways that this story depicts the reservation in a good way.The significance of the Fourth of July is important in the novel because it is said that Indians don’t even celebrate it but they have taken up the “white” holiday.

 

Evans, Stephen.  “Open Containers": Sherman Alexie's Drunken Indians.”  American Indian Quarterly 1. (2001): 46-72. JSTOR. Ohio University, Alden Lib. 17 May 2009.

 

This article, like many of the others, speaks of the struggles Native Americans face in the eyes of a white man.  Evans praises Sherman Alexie for his ability to write about difficult times and do everything from sad to heroic pieces of work.  Alexie was the target of fire for many critics when The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven came out because of his use of irony in the novel. Evans says that Alexie brings hopes of change into his writing and pieces of work.  He brings his life into the stories and things that he has been through and makes his audience feel the things that he has felt. This article also speaks of the humor that Alexie brings to his novels.  If possible, Evans talks about the strengths he brings to his drunken Indian depiction.  It shows the honesty in his work and the realism associated with The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Alexie confronts the reader and makes them feel the story he is conveying.

 

Armbruster-Sandoval, Ralph. “Teaching Smoke Signals: Fatherhood, Forgiveness, and "Freedom".”  Discussion In Education 23. (2008): 123-146. EBSCOhost. Ohio University, Alden Lib. 18 May 2009.

 

This article focuses on the film “Smoke Signals” that derived from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.  Armbruster-Sandoval speaks of forgiveness in the movie.  He speaks of how Victor had to forgive his father and the relationship between Thomas Builds-the-Fire and Victor’s father, Arnold Joseph. It then brings up the problems of the United States and Native Americans.  Armbruster-Sandoval asks the question of whether or not Alexie is suggesting that the Native Americans forgive America for the conquest.  The problem facing Arnold Joseph in Smoke Signals is that when his wife tells him there is no more alcohol he storms out thinking that he does not have a problem. He hits her first which also suggests that he has a problem.  The article talks about how Arnold had started the fire that killed Thomas’s parents and how he could not recover from this accident.  At the end of the movie, Victor spreads his father’s ashes and screams in pain that he must forgive his father. 

 

Works Cited:

Alexie, Sherman. “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight In Heaven.”Grove Press. New York: 2005

Coulombe, Joseph. “The Approximate Size of His Favorite Humor: Sherman Alexie’s Comic Connections and Disconnections in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” American Indian Quarterly 26 (winter 2002) : p. 94-115. Project Muse. Ohio University Lib. Athens, OH.

Summary/ Application TLRATFIH

Summary:

In this article, Critics arguet hat Alexie's writing demonstrates Indians and their culture as a cliche to be laughed at.  They claims that The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven disrupts the Indian and white community.   Coulombe thinks that Alexie's humor creates positive interactions betweeen individuals. Coulombe claims that Alexie doesn't ever use a moral to the story but that his humor is written in an honest way.  He brings up the second story in Alexie's novel, "A Drug Called Tradition" by saying that Victor may feel like the target of their laughter.  Coulombe says that Alexie writes with a purpose and sometimes, his use of humor distracts critics and readers or his audience.  Critics argue that Sherman Alexie's writing pokes fun at Spokane Indians and their traditions but in reality, Alexie writes stories that help explain the problems that Indians still face today.  Alexie'swriting tells the truth with humor.  Making jokes about a culture helps to accept the problems for some people.  Coulombe argues that Alexie's writing might poke fun at some of the Indian culture, but at the same time, it allows stories of Indian people to be put out in public so people will understand them more clearly.  Coulombe explains that humor is another type of intimacy that allows friendship and connection and humor is something that everyone has in common.

Application:

Sherman Alexie and Joseph Coulombe are writers that attempt to spread the culture of the Spokane Indians in a different way than most.  Coulombe defends Alexie by saying that he tells the truth in writing about his culture.  Alexie uses much humor in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven to write about the Spokane tribe.  Many of his stories are very sad and some may call them shameful against the Spokane people but Alexie and Coulombe just believe that his stories are honest and real.  

In "Amusements," a character known as Dirty Joe passes out from too much alcohol and Victor and Sadie decide that it would be a good idea to put him on an amusement ride and watch him tumble around in the car.  In the meantime, the white people are gathering around him and judging him be  cause he is a Spokane Indian and it seems that they are making assumptions that he is a shameful person.  Victor and Sadie stand around laughing at the amusement they had made for themselves until they realize that all of the white people are laughing at them and not with them.  This is a good example of why the critics in Coulombe's article characterized Alexie's writing as shameful and often misleading.  In Alexie's eyes, this story is about the good times he had and also about how life being a Spokane Indian can be tough because of the image others perceive in them.

Another example of how Alexie demonstrates Spokane Indians with humor is in the story, "A Drug Called Tradition."  In this story, they are having a large party and Thomas Builds-the-Fire, Junior, and Victor run off to tr a new drug.  On their way to Benjamin Lake, Thomas tries the new drug and begins to tell Victor and Junior stories of what he sees.  Alexie writes, "when Indians make lots of money from corporations that way, we can all hear our ancestors laughing in the trees. But we never can tell whether they're laughing at the Indians or the whites.  I think they're laughing at pretty much everybody." (Lone 13)  Victor thinks that he is a target for the whites and ancestor's laughter.  Alexie transforms the troubles he feels into humor in this story speaking of stories they all see while on their drug.

 

In The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,  Alexie uses humor to substitute the hardships of his Spokane tribe. Coulombe defends and agrees with Sherman Alexie whereas the critics critisize his way of writing by saying that it is shameful and misleading.  Critics are somewhat offended by the way Alexie uses alcoholism and how the Spokane Indians have dreams that the critics believe are made unreachable by Alexie.  Coulombe claims that the critics did not read the stories all the way through but just stopped as the humor upset them.  I agree with Coulombe on this statement because I believe that they critics would find more meaning by the conclusion of the stories.  I know I did.

Summary Application Revision

Works Cited:

Bird, Gloria. "Towards a Decolonization of the Mind and Text 1: Leslie Marmon Silko's "Ceremony"" Wicazo Sa Review, Vol 9, No. 2 Autumn 1993. University of Minnesota Press. 04 Jan. 2009 .

Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition). New York: Penguin Books, 2006.

Summary:

Gloria Bird begins the essay by talking about how people are living results of their colonization.  She talks of how stories, songs, and knowledge will be gone because of people passing away but then soon realizes that this is not necessarily true.  Bird is trying to free the mind of Native American “otherness.”  To do this, she compares Silko’s way of telling the story in different pieces, or nonlinear storytelling, to actual Indian stories.  Bird says that it is not right to classify people into groups through their races or their language.  She adds examples from her life to help better understand this feeling of decolonizing the mind and “otherness.”  For example, she recalls a song that she still knows even without the existence of the people who began it.  She then feels as though she is stealing a language because her mother was multilingual and she only spoke in English.  

 Bird claims that readers must learn to 'see' the world differently if they want to understand Ceremony. This is the fundamental challenge of critical fictions. This is referencing Ceremony, a novel that pushes a person to see the world through different eyes.  She explains that the challenge is getting the reader to view reality through the perceptions of the native other.  This means that the reader would put him or herself into the story and try to experience the story through the native's eyes.  She demonstrates that Silko writing Ceremony in fragments explains how each thing belongs to something else.  This means that the fragments are connected in some way and come together at the end to have more meaning.  Perhaps Tayo never noticed little things as much as he did after going through a traumatic war experience.

 Bird says that nothing was all good or all bad either.  She says that it all depends.  Gloria Bird explains that we must be willing to see the world differently and then references Ku'oosh by talking of how he uses old language to talk to Tayo.  None of the words were his own.  

 Gloria Bird continues to give many examples of how people need to learn to see the world differently.  She explains that she now knows that Western culture has known all along of the potential for language's capacity to create.

 

Application:

After reading Ceremony, it is clear that Tayo has a feeling of “otherness” because of his mixed blood.  He feels  that he does not belong anywhere and that he is decolonized from his Indian culture.  Tayo has mixed blood and Auntie is ashamed to have someone in the family that is of a different ethnicity.  She is also ashamed of Tayo’s mother for having a mixed boy like Tayo.  It is true that Auntie takes Tayo in and takes care of him but Tayo can tell that she is ashamed of him and he cannot help but feel betrayed by his own family. Also, Tayo struggles with trusting many different people.  At one point in the novel, Tayo feels betrayed by Harley but it turns out that Harley did not mean to betray him.  Instead it was Pinkie and Emo.  “He knew then that they were not his friends but had turned against him…He was not sure why he was crying, for the betrayal or because they were lost.  (Ceremony 225)  These people acted as his friends before but Tayo finally realized that he had been betrayed and that he was alone and afraid. 

 In her essay, Gloria bird sends a message that she has betrayed her family.  Although she does not actually say the word, anyone can tell that this is how she feels.  “I must recognize that I am also the product of colonization in that I speak English though my mother is multilingual.”  Internalizing the colonizer’s terms regarding the axiom of our Otherness and obvious difference, she spoke Indian around me only when she wanted to exclude me.”  This is also showing a bit of embarrassment.  Bird’s mother was obviously a bit ashamed that her daughter did not know their language.  Bird felt betrayed when her mother excluded her this way and she felt as if she wasn’t good enough for her family.  She felt as though she was decolonized from her culture and falling into Tayo’s feeling of “otherness.”

Another thing that comes to mind about these two pieces of writing is the religion or culture in both of them.  Auntie is a Christian woman which is a lot of the reason that she is ashamed of Tayo being of mixed decent.  Bird’s essay claims that the songs and stories of her religion and culture would be gone when the older people pass.  “In what may appear to be a contradiction, I catch myself thinking in my mother’s colonized version of reality:  that once the old people are gone, the songs, the stories, the knowledge will be lost.”  She then realizes that as time goes on, these stories and song are still passed throughout her culture and that is how even today, she knows them.  

Coulombe

Write a 200 word summary of Coulombe's argument in "The Approximate Size of His Favorite Humor."

For this summary, express a clear sense of the criticism of Alexie's humor with which Coloumbe is arguing.

In this article, Critics arguet hat Alexie's writing demonstrates Indians and their culture as a cliche to be laughed at.  He claims that The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven disrupts the Indian and white community but at the same time, it creates positive interactions betweeen individuals.  Coulombe claims that Alexie doesn't ever use a moral to the story but that his humor is written in an honest way.  He brings up the second story in Alexie's novel, "A Drug Called Tradition" by saying that Victor may feel like the target of their laughter.  Coulombe says that Alexie writes with a purpose and sometimes, his use of humor distracts critics and readers or his audience.  Alexie writes stories that help explain the problems that Indians still face today.  Alexie'swriting tells the truth with humor.  Making jokes about a culture helps to accept it for some people.  Coulombe argues that Alexie's writing might poke fun at some of the Indian culture, but at the same time, it allows stories of Indian people to be put out in public so people will understand them more clearly.  Coulombe explains that humor is another type of intimacy that allows friendship and connection and humor is something that everyone has in common.

7 stories in The Lone Ranger

Frank Ross asked Alexie about the political nature of his writing, quoting him as saying he does not like to beat readers over the head with it. Alexie replied: “I like to make them laugh first, then beat them over the head . . . when they are defenseless.” Describe some examples from the stories that demonstrate this tactic. Choose one example to focus on and explain how the humor and political point work together as in the above quote.

On The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Alexie uses many different examples of humor while including stories of the past as well.  In many of them, he will include humor before the serious stories to kind of make the stories a little more light.  In the story of Amusements, Alexie talks of how Dirty Joe is drunk and passed out.  Victor and Sadie put him on a rollercoaster to get some fun out of it.  They end up laughing until they cried until reality set in.  All the "white faces" laughed at the Indian on the rollercoaster and soon they realized that this was not funny anymore.  Alexie used humor and reality to explain this story.

On whiteness, Indian identity and colonialism, Alexie says, “What is colonialism but the breeding out of existence of the colonized? The most dangerous thing for Indians, then, now and forever is that we love our colonizers. And we do.” He goes on to say, and I paraphrase, that Indian identity now is mostly a matter of cultural difference; that culture is received knowledge, because the authentic practitioners are gone. The culture is all adopted culture, not innate. Colonization is complete. Think about how what he is discussing plays out in his stories. Choose one (a different one than for the first question) and discuss how a story represents the characters' relationship to the tribe's past and to the colonizing culture.

In, This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona, Alexie explains of the death of Victor's father.  He also explains of when Victor and Thomas Builds-the-Fire went to see the fireworks on the fourth of July.  This is a very good example of the relationship between the tribe's past and to the colonizing culture.  "You know," Thomas said, "It's strange how us Indians celebrate the Fourth of July.  It ain't like it was our independence everybody was fighting for."  Victor speaks of how it was weird for them to celebrate the "white people's" holiday.