Sherman Alexie: Critical Analysis Essay

Fighting the self in Sherman Alexie's "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven"

Sherman Alexie's short story "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven," relates the story of the narrator, an Indian who has left his reservation, who is adrift in the white world of Seattle. The narrator feels that everywhere he goes he is regarded like a threat -- even the 7-11. This leaves him in a constant state of anger, an anger that is intensified by alcoholism and a failing relationship with a white woman. Treated as someone who is prone to violence because of his race by a prejudiced society, the narrator eventually becomes violent, in a kind of unconscious self-fulfilling prophesy. He constantly fights with his white girlfriend. "In Seattle, I broke lamps. She and I would argue and I'd break a lamp, just pick it up and throw it down. At first, she'd buy replacement lamps, expensive and beautiful. But after a while, she'd buy lamps from Goodwill or garage sales. Then, she just gave up the idea entirely and we'd argue in the dark" (Alexie).

The narrator begins to turn against strangers because of his frustration and sense of personal disempowerment. Early on in the story, he tries to coax a 7-ll clerk to turn his back on him, sensing the clerk is frightened to do so because of the narrator's menacing appearance. Eventually the boy says "I was hoping you weren't crazy. You were scaring me" and laughs, and gives the narrator his order for free. At times like this it is unclear if the speaker is actually menacing or the victim of prejudice, since the clerk never explicitly makes a reference to the fact the narrator is an Indian, the narrator merely makes the assumption (Alexie).The narrator is, after all, wandering around at 3am in the morning and possibly drunk. The clerk does not refer to the narrator's Indian appearance although the narrator himself sees it at the source of the prejudice directed against him. Similarly, the narrator describes the aimless wandering he feels compelled to engage in which often results in him getting lost in a white neighborhood and being picked up by cops because of his rage, although in this instance the cops do admit to profiling him. Alexie implies that once someone is the victim of prejudice in one sphere of his life, he begins to see prejudice everywhere.

The narrator admits he treats his girlfriend badly, without real justification. "I walked through that relationship with an executioner's hood. Or more appropriately, with war paint and sharp arrows." (Alexie). The narrator cites his dreams as the reason for his behavior, dreams which depict Indian victimization at the hands of whites. "The most vivid image of that dream stays with me. Three mounted soldiers played polo with a dead Indian woman's head. When I first dreamed it, I thought it was just a product of my anger and imagination. But since then, I've read similar accounts of that kind of evil in the old West" (Alexie). The relationship between the violence and the dreams is symbolized in this paragraph: the narrator is violent and there is a personal basis for his bad behavior and alcoholism, yet there is also a link to a larger reality of the Indian's condition, namely that Indians are marginalized in white society.

When the narrator returns to the reservation, there is both acceptance and frustration. "When I got back to the reservation, my family wasn't….....