Comparing The Lone Ranger And Tonto Fistfight In Heaven

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Sherman Alexie's "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” includes a collection of 22 stories about the life of a boy on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Like much of Alexie's fiction, this collection addresses the many serious problems that modern Native Americans face, including alcoholism, poverty, masculinity, and racism. In spite of all of this or perhaps because of it Native American has suffered many hardships, and trying to live their lives in a more contemporary version. The past is both a critical and a liberating force within the novel. It is the main source of the continuing suffering and somewhat of an antidote to that suffering. There are many collections in the story where you see those roles of alcoholism and poverty…show more content…
In Every little Hurricane the main character Victor is telling a story about his parents New Year’s Eve party in 1976 on the Spokane Indian Reservation. He watches his uncles fight from the window. In the story a hurricane touches down on the reservation, but Victor is more bothered by the bad memories that the weather seems to bring up for the guests, who become sick and even vicious as they continue to drink. The next morning, the hurricane is gone and life goes on as before. The story itself seems to reference a lot to alcohol, poverty and weather. There are also several parts of this story where you can see the connection Alexie is trying to make between the story and the history of the Native American Indiana’s. For example (pg.22) “They’re going to kill each other,” somebody yelled from an upstairs window. Nobody disagreed and nobody moved to change the situation. Witnesses. They were all witnesses and nothing more. For hundreds of years, Indians were witnesses to crimes of an epic scale.” In this particular quote you can see how Alexie is trying to establish the complex relationship between the individual Native American experience and the American Indians' tragic history, which spans over centuries. The story suggests that the modern hardships that Native Americans
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