Sherman Alexie's short story "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven" takes a pessimistic perspective on the life of one American Indian character. From this story, it is likely that the author's overall outlook on the future of American Indians in the same situation is certainly far from optimistic, though there are some signs of hope, such as the narrator's year of sobriety. The straightforward, plain, prosaic style is expressive of the negative outlook on life which permeates the protagonist's character and his environment, as if the protagonist has no extra energy to try to express himself beyond his surface thoughts and feelings. There is little hope for any significant change for the better in this story, but only the sense that things will stay about the same, or sometimes a little better or a little worse, and all one can do is accept that sad fact and try to endure the grind of daily life with a realistic frame of mind.
There is no center to the story, just as there is no center to the life of the protagonist. The reader can view this coincidence as a deliberate effect on the part of the writer, or simply a kind of laissez-faire style which matches the passive character of the protagonist. In either case, the result is a story and a man and a life which are far more depressing than hopeful. Whether or not that is the impact the author intends, for this reader that is precisely the impact that occurred. As the story ends:
It may take hours, even years, for me to sleep again. There's nothing surprising or disappointing in that. I know how all my dreams end anyway (Alexie 28).
In other words, all his waking dreams for a better life have ended badly, with disappointment, just as his actual dreams at night end with such horrors as the head of a dead American Indian being used as sport by whites.
Once the reader sees the limitations of the circumstances of the protagonist's life, and the intentions of the a...