Poetry is a universe of subjectivity. When two poems are set up, side-by-side, to create discussion, results may vary. But it is clear in Sherman Alexie’s two poems, “Defending Walt Whitman” and “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel”, where the discussion must go. Alexie explores Native American culture and the effect that the Europeans have had on the native people of the United States. This feat is accomplished through the thoughtful use of several literary devices, including tone, simile, allusion, and metaphor.
Tradition is an important building block in the history of any people. This statement is especially apparent for the Native Americans, and is something that Alexie exploits in his poetry to intertwine a deeper meaning into his work. In “Defending Walt Whitman”, Alexie uses
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But the most obvious effects are seen in How to Write the Great American Indian Novel. Alexie spend a great deal of time antagonizing what makes an ‘indian’. He cites birth, if you love one, if you smell like one, if you “ carry an Indian deep inside themselves” (line 28), or if it is your interior. Alexie makes the point to use the term ‘half-breed’, which begs the question of what qualifies an American Indian? As previously mentioned, Alexie employs a bitter tone through this poem, and in part can be credited to the cynicism and anger Alexie feels to the white culture seeping through the cracks and oppressing the Native American people. The statement could be made that white people claim the heritage of the Native American as their own. They stomp through the U.S. taking land, culture, and tradition. The sealing factor of this idea is seen in the last lines, “In the Great American Indian novel, when it is finally written, all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be ghosts” (lines
Sherman Alexie grew up in Wellpinit, Washington as a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene tribal member (Sherman Alexie). He began his personal battle with substance abuse in 1985 during his freshman year at Jesuit Gonzaga University. The success of his first published work in 1990 incentivized Alexie to overcome his alcohol abuse. “In his short-story and poetry collections, Alexie illuminates the despair, poverty, and alcoholism that often shape the lives of Native Americans living on reservations” (Sherman Alexie). When developing his characters, Alexie often gives them characteristics of substance abuse, poverty and criminal behaviors in an effort to evoke sadness with his readers. Alexie utilizes other art forms, such as film, music, cartoons, and the print media, to bombard mainstream distortion of Indian culture and to redefine Indianness. “Both the term Indian and the stereotypical image are created through histories of misrepresentation—one is a simulated word without a tribal real and the other an i...
This quote describes how Louise Halfe uses all four common elements of native literature in her writings. I have chosen to discuss two of the elements she frequently uses, Spirituality and Orality in relation to three of her poems: My Ledders, She Told Me and The Heat of my Grandmothers.
Walt Whitman was a famous American poet who wrote many great poems during the Civil War. Though he originally worked for printing presses and newspapers, he later became a famous poet. During the Civil War, Whitman wrote many patriotic poems that supported the ideas of the North. Whitman’s poems will forever be linked to the American Civil War era of poetry. Walt Whitman was an iconic American poet with an interesting life that later impacted his works of poetry.
The systematic racism and discrimination in America has long lasting effects that began back when Europeans first stepped foot on American soil is still visible today but only not written into the law. This racism has lead to very specific consequences on the Native people in today’s modern world, and while the racism is maybe not as obvious it is still very present. These modern Native peoples fight against the feeling of community as a Native person, and feeling entirely alone and not a part of it. The poem “The Reservation” by Susan Cloud and “The Real Indian Leans Against” by Chrystos examine the different effects and different settings of how their cultures survived but also how so much was lost for them within their own identity.
Sherman Alexie’s character’s often struggle to release themselves from the stereotypes that have been forced upon them. The narrators of these stories all become the Indian that the white man wants them to be in order to tell their stories. This can leave the readers with a sense of discomfort, which is exactly what Alexie wants to do. He wants the reader to feel uncomfortable with these stereotypes so that they know there is something wrong with attaching a group of people to certain standards like that their all alcoholics, live on reservations, and spiritual. He pushes this feeling of discomfort onto his readers to make them aware of social injustice and immorality towards Native Americans and much of this discomfort is projected through the use of dark humor, cultural assimilation, and ceremony.
Sherman Alexie has made a name for himself as a prolific contemporary Native American writer, taking inspiration from his own past and experiences with modern Indian life. While there are many enduring themes throughout Alexie's writings: Native identity, modern reservation life, alcohol abuse etc. when it comes to his collection War Dances, the most apparent motif is fatherhood. Community and family are the heart of Native American cultures, with the father archetype holding great honor and expectation. However with alcohol abuse, poverty, and school drop rates running rampant through Native American reservations it is no surprise that more and more Native children are growing up in broken homes. In an alarming poll by the Kids Count Data Center, a national census, in 2011 out of 355,000 polled 53% live in single-parent homes. The lack of a leader, a strong male role model is a major factor in many of the abysmal statistics facing modern reservation children. The despotism of Native American culture has always been based on the deprivation of power, status, equality, and home. This presents a paucity of male dominance, many of these men feel helpless in a society where they have no real identity. They are forced to live in the idea they have no personal potential so it is understandable why the majority of Indian males may feel inadequate and unable to care for their families. Alexie himself struggled in a home with an alcoholic and neglectful father, and like many Native children he almost gave into a similar chain of abuse and alcoholism. This is what inspires him to write, to expose the corroding inner workings of the modern Native peoples brought on by centuries of autocracy. Oppression and the idea of fatherhood is a common ...
Connie Fife is a Saskatchewan, Cree poet who writes using her unique perspective, telling of her personal experiences and upbringing. This perspective is revealed to her audience through the poems “This is not a Metaphor”, “I Have Become so Many Mountains”, and “She Who Remembers” all of which present a direct relationship to her traditional background and culture (Rosen-Garten, Goldrick-Jones 1010). To show the relationship of her experiences through her poetry, Fife uses the form of dramatic monologue, as well as modern language and literal writing to display themes about racism presenting her traditional viewpoint to her audience.
American poetry, unlike other nations’ poetry, is still in the nascent stage because of the absence of a history in comparison to other nations’ poetry humming with matured voices. Nevertheless, in the past century, American poetry has received the recognition it deserves from the creative poetic compositions of Walt Whitman, who has been called “the father of American poetry.” His dynamic style and uncommon content is well exhibited in his famous poem “Song of Myself,” giving a direction to the American writers of posterity. In addition, his distinct use of the line and breath has had a huge impression on the compositions of a number of poets, especially on the works of the present-day poet Allen Ginsberg, whose debatable poem “Howl” reverberates with the traits of Whitman’s poetry. Nevertheless, while the form and content of “Howl” may have been impressed by “Song of Myself,” Ginsberg’s poem expresses a change from Whitman’s use of the line, his first-person recital, and his vision of America. As Whitman’s seamless lines are open-ended, speaking the voice of a universal speaker presenting a positive outlook of America, Ginsberg’s poem, on the contrary, uses long lines that end inward to present the uneasiness and madness that feature the vision of America that Ginsberg exhibits through the voice of a prophetic speaker.
As this poem characterizes the view of a native woman expressing feelings of passion relating to her culture, it also criticizes society, in particular Christianity, as the speaker is experiencing feelings of discontent with the outcome of residential schools. It does not directly criticize the faith, but through the use of a heavy native dialect and implications to the Christian faith it becomes simple to read the speakers emotions.
As majority of the narrative in this poem is told through the perspective of a deceased Nishnaabeg native, there is a sense of entitlement to the land present which is evident through the passage: “ breathe we are supposed to be on the lake … we are not supposed to be standing on this desecrated mound looking not looking”. Through this poem, Simpson conveys the point of how natives are the true owners of the land and that colonizers are merely intruders and borrowers of the land. There is an underlying idea that instead of turning a blind eye to the abominations colonizers have created, the natives are supposed to be the ones enjoying and utilising the land. The notion of colonizers simply being visitors is furthered in the conclusion of the poem, in which the colonizers are welcomed to the land but are also told “please don’t stay too long” in the same passage. The conclusion of this poem breaks the colonialistic idea of land belonging to the colonizer once colonized by putting in perspective that colonizers are, in essence, just passerbys on land that is not
A reader of Sherman Alexie’s novel Reservation Blues enters the text with similar assumptions of Native American life, unless of course, he or she is of that particular community. If he or she is not, however, there is the likelihood that the ‘typical’ reader has images of Native Americans based upon long-held social stereotypes of the Lone Ranger’s Tonto and Kevin Costner’s “Dances With Wolves,” possibly chastened with some positive, homey images of the First Thanksgiving as well. However, Alexie’s prose forces one to apprehend Native American life anew, and to see Native Americans as fully-fledged individual characters, with wants and needs and desires, not as those who are simply stoic and ‘other.’
In this poem, there is a young woman and her loving mother discussing their heritage through their matrilineal side. The poem itself begins with what she will inherit from each family member starting with her mother. After discussing what she will inherit from each of her family members, the final lines of the poem reflect back to her mother in which she gave her advice on constantly moving and never having a home to call hers. For example, the woman describes how her father will give her “his brown eyes” (Line 7) and how her mother advised her to eat raw deer (Line 40). Perhaps the reader is suggesting that she is the only survivor of a tragedy and it is her heritage that keeps her going to keep safe. In the first two lines of the poem, she explains how the young woman will be taking the lines of her mother’s (Lines 1-2). This demonstrates further that she is physically worried about her features and emotionally worried about taking on the lineage of her heritage. Later, she remembered the years of when her mother baked the most wonderful food and did not want to forget the “smell of baking bread [that warmed] fined hairs in my nostrils” (Lines 3-4). Perhaps the young woman implies that she is restrained through her heritage to effectively move forward and become who she would like to be. When reading this poem, Native American heritage is an apparent theme through the lifestyle examples, the fact lineage is passed through woman, and problems Native Americans had faced while trying to be conquested by Americans. Overall, this poem portrays a confined, young woman trying to overcome her current obstacles in life by accepting her heritage and pursuing through her
Do you know Charlie Russell’s famous paintings? He also had some quotes with that. I feel like his quotes had a positive and a negative effect on American indians. It has a negative effect on American indians because it was showing how they got their land taken away. It also shows that it’s positive by showing how the American indians take over the white travelers. I feel like Charlie Russell’s quotes have a negative and positive effect on american indians.
His writing style techniques in both stories have a narrative structure, focalization, visual connection, social situation, imagery and themes of personal and collective crisis but a different point of view. Each piece describes the daily life of a Native American living on the reservation including himself, a place where tradition was fading because of the outside world of White Society. The perception of Native Americans provides an inside look at what they thought and how they lived their daily lives. Alexie illustrated the lives on reservations through his writing with the use of literary
Louise Erdrich’s short story “American horse” is a literary piece written by an author whose works emphasize the American experience for a multitude of different people from a plethora of various ethnic backgrounds. While Erdrich utilizes a full arsenal of literary elements to better convey this particular story to the reader, perhaps the two most prominent are theme and point of view. At first glance this story seems to portray the struggle of a mother who has her son ripped from her arms by government authorities; however, if the reader simply steps back to analyze the larger picture, the theme becomes clear. It is important to understand the backgrounds of both the protagonist and antagonists when analyzing theme of this short story. Albetrine, who is the short story’s protagonist, is a Native American woman who characterizes her son Buddy as “the best thing that has ever happened to me”. The antagonist, are westerners who work on behalf of the United States Government. Given this dynamic, the stage is set for a clash between the two forces. The struggle between these two can be viewed as a microcosm for what has occurred throughout history between Native Americans and Caucasians. With all this in mind, the reader can see that the theme of this piece is the battle of Native Americans to maintain their culture and way of life as their homeland is invaded by Caucasians. In addition to the theme, Erdrich’s usage of the third person limited point of view helps the reader understand the short story from several different perspectives while allowing the story to maintain the ambiguity and mysteriousness that was felt by many Natives Americans as they endured similar struggles. These two literary elements help set an underlying atmos...