Superman And Me Analysis

1119 Words5 Pages
The Past is Just the Past Within “Superman and Me”, “Every Little Hurricane”, “Indian Education”, and “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona”, which are short stories all written by Sherman Alexie, tell about boys and men living on Indian reservations. A famous quote by Sherman Alexie states, “Don’t live up to your stereotypes.” This quote is shown through these four different short stories by the representation of the theme; any historic events from history or negative situation should not contradict a person's current situational state, and nor should it change a person's attitude towards a certain situation. Stereotypes are historical situations, and Sherman Alexie states that a person should not live up to them, as in they should…show more content…
In the first example, Alexie’s parents refuse to give up, and in the second example, Alexie refused to let stereotypes or historical situations hold him back. Quoted at the beginning of the story “Superman and Me,” “We were poor by most standards, but one of my parents usually managed to find some minimum-wage job or another, which made us middle-class by reservation standards” (Superman 11). Even though their family was poor, his parents still managed to find a job, and didn’t let the negative situation of lacking money hold the family back from continuing to find work and survive. At the end of the story, Alexie writes about himself, “We were Indian Children who were expected to be stupid... I refused to fail. I was smart. I was arrogant. I was lucky” (Superman 13). Indian children were expected to fail every subject, it was stereotyped, but Alexie refused to let that stereotype or historical situation hold him back. He refused to let the past history of the Indians stop him from being successful, so he continued on to be successful. Within these two examples, the theme is shown to be present in the story “Superman and…show more content…
So Victor called the Tribal Council” (This 1). Victor had a poor family, and had no way of gaining the money to get to his father's home, so without letting that situation stop him on his mission, Victor called the Tribal Council to get money for retrieving the ashes whom were once his father. That plan eventually falls away in the story, and which again, Victor is not discouraged enough to abort his mission, because Thomas steps up and helps Victor on his journey. After the arrival back home for his adventure, Victor and Thomas are conversing back and forth, “I know how it is,” Thomas said. “I know you ain’t going to treat any better than you did before. I know your friends would give you too much shit about it” (This 11). Even though Thomas helped Victor get to his father’s trailer, Victor didn’t let that change the way their friendship was. The relationship between them went back to not associating, even when Thomas had done a favor towards Victor. This follows with the theme, because that was a past or historic event that

More about Superman And Me Analysis

Open Document