Two Native American Writers

The title story in Alexie's collection of stories takes a deeply pessimistic perspective on the life of Native American characters. All of the stories, and especially the title story, are pessimistic, even cynical, though if one looks hard enough there are some signs of hope, such as the narrator's year of sobriety. However, that sobriety does not address the racism faced by Native Americans, but rather seems to say that if Native Americans are to overcome race-based disadvantages and survive, it will be on an individual basis.

The main character in the title story is stopped by the police: "'Well, you should be more careful where you drive,' the officer said. 'You're making people nervous. You don't fit the profile of the neighborhood.'" The narrator says, "I wanted to tell him that I didn't really fit the profile of the country but I knew it would just get me into trouble'" (Alexie 24). The irony is clear: it was the country of the Native Americans, and now they do not even "fit the profile" of that country.

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ms the narrator knows are "bad" dreams and he knows how they end, just as he knows that his waking dreams about a dramatically better life will end in disappointment. On the other hand, Foster, writing of Alexie's reference to another character in another story, quotes the author: "He was a white man, and therefore he could dream" (Foster 3). The message is clear: this is a white man's world, in the late 20th century, just as it was in the 18th and 19th centuries. The American Indian might fight it, might rage against it, but, at least in this story, he will not emerge victorious against it. Scott writes of another story in the collection: The narrator, a young Indian boy, dreams that soldiers come to devour his people. The dream comes true. The soldiers arrive, randomly kill and terrorize the people on the reservation and gather up the survivors. The Indians are helpless victims. . . . (Scott 2). Still, to be fair, Alexie may mean that small victories over depression, over hopelessness, over racism, over alienation, over alcoholism and indolence, are possible and important in the survival of individual human beings whose people have been historical victims of a far more powerful force of destruction and genocide. Le
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Approximate Word count = 2132
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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