This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix Arizona Analysis

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This is what it means to Say Phoenix Arizona This paper seeks to illustrate the light upon the book “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” which evokes emotion by explaining the realities of peer pressure and it conveys humanity in kindness. The story focuses on the culture, societal problems and traditions experienced by people living in Northern America, especially the Indian ethnic group. The book highlights societal difficulties faced by the youth and how they recognize and understand the situations and traditions held by members of the society. The fundamental message is that people can solve their glitches through undertaking to help each other. Throughout the book, the writer presents Arnold Joseph as the father figure…show more content…
The most apparent conflict in the story is that of the relationship between Thomas and Victor. However, through the death of Victor’s father, they come together. At the beginning of the story, Victor loses his job at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and later learns that his father has died of a heart attack. He has little money to make a trip to Phoenix and decide to ask for Tribal Council for assistance. The tribal declines to offer the full amount of his request because they did not have enough to bring Victor’s father back to Phoenix. Victor becomes desperate and turns to Thomas, an old childhood friend for assistance. At first he refused assistance from Thomas because of his unpopular and strange reputation. Thomas is known as the reservation story teller who always shared stories and continues telling stories even after people stopped listening. Victor becomes weary and can negotiate a plan with Thomas, which is to travel to and from Phoenix. Victor meditates on his experience with Thomas during the trip. At the age of fifteen years, they had stopped being friends and got into a fistfight. As an adult, though they would often see each other on the reservation, but they rarely interact. When the opportunity arises after the arrival of his father’s trailer in Arizona, Victor apologizes to Thomas. During the travel to Phoenix, Thomas explores a series of different flashbacks and memories. The format…show more content…
The two men were united by their past relationship and Victor’s father uniting them through their shared experience. The event is an experience that provides the storyteller a story to tell all the while the revelation helps Victor better understand his role in society. Thomas and Victor return home and begin to separate their ways and try to find words to end the journey. As Thomas continues to share his story, Victor divides the ash into two and hand one to him. Sharing the ash is a simple act of showing kindness further developing their ongoing friendship. They renew their friendship through simple acts of kindness observed in the community and self-identity and the handing over the ashes provide literal and figurative symbolism for their friendship and an assurance to remain as friends. Thomas remains as a story teller and is labeled as crazy. Victor respectfully listens to Thomas stories after the renewal of their friendship. The return journey is a better change to understand and accept Native American identity and heal their friendship with each other (Schakel and Ridl). At the end of the story, Victor manages to renew their relationship. In a delicate fashion, the writer rekindles Victor’s relationship with a sequence of short stories which are told at random and out of order. The first two pages of the story take the reader on a journey bouncing from today from the past event in the
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