Superman and Me Sherman Alexie Group B
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Superman and Me Sherman Alexie
- I learned to read with a Superman comic book. Simple enough, I suppose. I cannot recall which particular Superman comic book I read, nor can I remember which villain he fought in that issue. I cannot remember the plot, nor the means by which I obtained the comic book. What I can remember is this: I was 3 years old, a Spokane Indian boy living with his family on the Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern Washington state. 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. I had a brother and three sisters. We lived on a combination of irregular paychecks, hope, fear and government surplus food.
He is giving the readers information about his life so that they have context. He is poor and reading is rare. The point is not the book he read, but that he read a book at all.
I think Alexie’s word choice and the arrangement of these words in this excerpt is very significant in the meaning of the text itself. In the first half of the paragraph he repeats the word “I” a lot, its the main subject. But in the second half of the paragraph he uses “They”, as in referring to the Indian kids. I think Alexie is trying to explain to us the internal change he went through. At first everything was about himself but he realized by the end by his paragraph by using the word “our”, that life is about all of us.Also, throughout the excerpt he uses a lot of negative terms like "sullen… defeated…refuse and resist…arrogant. by doing this I think he is trying to exaggerate his argument for equal education. Alexie is telling us about his experience with the Indian kids. He makes the audience understand the dire need for novels, short stories, poems , and overall a good education for all kids. Through the second half, he’s speaking for kids who cant speak for themselves. To sum up everything the Alexie said I would say, everyone has the right to a good education, and the means to have an open mind. How we educate our children is how they will grow up to be so its saving our lives to teach them well. If we don’t invest in our future, how do we expect to have a virtuous one?
Alexie really didn’t have anything except books. Reading and sectioning everything into paragraphs is his coping method.
Books are the reason Alexie is who he is. Without his passion for reading, he would have been just like his classmates: he wouldn’t have cared, he wouldn’t have wanted to learn.
I think Alexi was formed by his environment along with his books. Without his father’s love for books he may have not even started reading or have been supported in reading. Like Frederick Douglas being given the inspiration to learn by Mrs. Auld.
Although he says it is simple this was the moment that started his reading journey. He later went on to write books, although the book he started with may not have seemed important, reading that book was a turning point in his life. Sometimes the moments that seem the most simple have the most impacts.
- My father, who is one of the few Indians who went to Catholic school on purpose, was an avid reader of westerns, spy thrillers, murder mysteries, gangster epics, basketball player biographies and anything else he could find. He bought his books by the pound at Dutch's Pawn Shop, Goodwill, Salvation Army and Value Village. When he had extra money, he bought new novels at supermarkets, convenience stores and hospital gift shops. Our house was filled with books. They were stacked in crazy piles in the bathroom, bedrooms and living room. In a fit of unemployment-inspired creative energy, my father built a set of bookshelves and soon filled them with a random assortment of books about the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, the Vietnam War and the entire 23-book series of the Apache westerns. My father loved books, and since I loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well.
I believe reading wouldn’t have such a huge impact of him if his father didn’t read continuously. It truly shows the relationship between the father and the son, of how close they were. If he wasn’t so affectionate, he wouldn’t have been so influenced to read.
Alexie is coming from basically nothing. He wants to read all the time and nothing else.
Alexie’s main point of this paragraph is the fact that his dad was such an avid reader. That his dad’s obsession with books is the reason Alexie loved to read so much, and, ultimately, why he became a writer.
Alexie uses lists throughout paragraph two; multiple times he provides several examples, when he could have just as easily gave a generic multiplier like “etc.”
Most of Alexie’s sentences in this specific paragraph are quite long. Except for this one. I believe he does this to put more power behind this statement in particular. To show that it’s more important than the rest.
- I can remember picking up my father's books before I could read. The words themselves were mostly foreign, but I still remember the exact moment when I first understood, with a sudden clarity, the purpose of a paragraph. I didn't have the vocabulary to say "paragraph," but I realized that a paragraph was a fence that held words. The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose. They had some specific reason for being inside the same fence. This knowledge delighted me. I began to think of everything in terms of paragraphs. Our reservation was a small paragraph within the United States. My family's house was a paragraph, distinct from the other paragraphs of the LeBrets to the north, the Fords to our south and the Tribal School to the west. Inside our house, each family member existed as a separate paragraph but still had genetics and common experiences to link us. Now, using this logic, I can see my changed family as an essay of seven paragraphs: mother, father, older brother, the deceased sister, my younger twin sisters and our adopted little brother.
- At the same time I was seeing the world in paragraphs, I also picked up that Superman comic book. Each panel, complete with picture, dialogue and narrative was a three-dimensional paragraph. In one panel, Superman breaks through a door. His suit is red, blue and yellow. The brown door shatters into many pieces. I look at the narrative above the picture. I cannot read the words, but I assume it tells me that "Superman is breaking down the door." Aloud, I pretend to read the words and say, "Superman is breaking down the door." Words, dialogue, also float out of Superman's mouth. Because he is breaking down the door, I assume he says, "I am breaking down the door." Once again, I pretend to read the words and say aloud, "I am breaking down the door" In this way, I learned to read.
The repetition of the word Superman makes us focus more on Alexie, because he is saying how Superman can break down a door and he himself can’t even read a book.
- This might be an interesting story all by itself. A little Indian boy teaches himself to read at an early age and advances quickly. He reads "Grapes of Wrath" in kindergarten when other children are struggling through "Dick and Jane." If he'd been anything but an Indian boy living on the reservation, he might have been called a prodigy. But he is an Indian boy living on the reservation and is simply an oddity. He grows into a man who often speaks of his childhood in the third-person, as if it will somehow dull the pain and make him sound more modest about his talents.
The rhyming scheme between prodigy and oddity was deliberate, since it stands out the most. To the readers, it emphasizes the reality of an Indian boy compared to the non-Indian boy. It draws major sympathy from the audience and makes us question if we withhold any racial barriers to people as well.
The author’s diction such as dull (the pain) and modest (about talents) makes the audience sympathetic to him as well. I believe he used these words to emphasize his insecurity, how there’s almost shame in his talents since he didn’t have any recognition as a child. It’s very crucial that a kid gets attention from a young age.
- A smart Indian is a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and non-Indians alike. I fought with my classmates on a daily basis. They wanted me to stay quiet when the non-Indian teacher asked for answers, for volunteers, for help. We were Indian children who were expected to be stupid. Most lived up to those expectations inside the classroom but subverted them on the outside. They struggled with basic reading in school but could remember how to sing a few dozen powwow songs. They were monosyllabic in front of their non-Indian teachers but could tell complicated stories and jokes at the dinner table. They submissively ducked their heads when confronted by a non-Indian adult but would slug it out with the Indian bully who was 10 years older. As Indian children, we were expected to fail in the non-Indian world. Those who failed were ceremonially accepted by other Indians and appropriately pitied by non-Indians.
- By using we/they he shows the split between the two parties of Indians, by using they, it shows what the Indians were expected to do, but we showed their potential
*If knowledge is such a powerful thing, then why would they accept failure?
*No matter their decision, it is a win-lose situation, but with knowledge comes power, and he’s trying to show Indians how pitiful they’ll be if they don’t take the opportunity to learn
The Indians accept failure because all they’ve known is that they’ve been treated like idiots by white people and that other Indians have accepted their failure. If nobody counters that belief it becomes reality. It takes strong people to push forward and take a stand.
- I refused to fail. I was smart. I was arrogant. I was lucky. I read books late into the night, until I could barely keep my eyes open. I read books at recess, then during lunch, and in the few minutes left after I had finished my classroom assignments. I read books in the car when my family traveled to powwows or basketball games. In shopping malls, I ran to the bookstores and read bits and pieces of as many books as I could. I read the books my father brought home from the pawnshops and secondhand. I read the books I borrowed from the library. I read the backs of cereal boxes. I read the newspaper. I read the bulletins posted on the walls of the school, the clinic, the tribal offices, the post office. I read junk mail. I read auto-repair manuals. I read magazines. I read anything that had words and paragraphs. I read with equal parts joy and desperation. I loved those books, but I also knew that love had only one purpose. I was trying to save my life.
I think he says that a lot because he is trying to emphasize how important and meaninginful reading was to him. How it encouraged him and influenced him.
In this paragraph Alexi shows his drive to be an avid reader and to steer clear from failure by giving up.
What makes someone want to improve in hopeless situations? Is it naturally within them or were they inspired by someone or something? What can this say about them?
In this paragraph he is explaining how reading has helped him and has saved him as he says in the last sentence. I think he was trying to say that reading basically saved his life and have him a purpose.
He wanted to show that he could be a good kind of different. And put social expectations aside.
He compares reading to saving his life, since this is a big comparison, how much of an impact does reading have on him?
- Despite all the books I read, I am still surprised I became a writer. I was going to be a pediatrician. These days, I write novels, short stories, and poems. I visit schools and teach creative writing to Indian kids. In all my years in the reservation school system, I was never taught how to write poetry, short stories or novels. I was certainly never taught that Indians wrote poetry, short stories and novels. Writing was something beyond Indians. I cannot recall a single time that a guest teacher visited the reservation. There must have been visiting teachers. Who were they? Where are they now? Do they exist? I visit the schools as often as possible. The Indian kids crowd the classroom. Many are writing their own poems, short stories and novels. They have read my books. They have read many other books. They look at me with bright eyes and arrogant wonder. They are trying to save their lives. Then there are the sullen and already defeated Indian kids who sit in the back rows and ignore me with theatrical precision. The pages of their notebooks are empty. They carry neither pencil nor pen. They stare out the window. They refuse and resist. "Books," I say to them. "Books," I say. I throw my weight against their locked doors. The door holds. I am smart. I am arrogant. I am lucky. I am trying to save our lives.
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