Phase 1, Prompt 3: Brandi Baker

                Sherman Alexie’s novel, “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven”, according to Alexie the writing style is characterized as “reservation realism”, the truth of life on the reservation as Alexie views it, which is evident  in the school year short stories.  These short stories compare greatly to the reservation boarding schools during the mid 1900’s which Alexie, the author, attended as a child.  This shows that Alexie takes from really facts of life on the reservation, whether their his experiences or others that he has see or hear of, and creates this novel of realistic life of the reservation as a whole. 

After looking up reservation boarding schools in the 1900’s, I found many comparisons to the second grade year in the “Indian Education” chapter of the novel. During the mid 1900’s, the first reservation boarding schools were “first established by (white) Christian missionaries” whose goal was to teach “Euro- American standards” to the (who they viewed as) uncivilized, sinful Indians (Wikipedia).  The purpose of the reservation boarding schools was to civilize these Indians into well-off educated American individuals.  This American reservation history directly aligns with the description of the student’s second grade classroom experience in the novel.  The Indian student had a missionary teacher, named Betty Towle, who was a white American placed in this classroom to civilize her Indian students (Alexie, 172).  There was a clear discrimination towards the Native American students in her classroom.  This is shown when she does not call the Indian narrator by name but as Indian.  She did not view them as equals but as a non-superior savage race in need of civilization.  This view was characterized through her actions and how she treated the Native American students.  When the teacher had her student eat his/her spelling test after getting all the questions right shows that she did not care for her students like a normal teacher would but views them as a problem and in need of refining.  Even after they accomplished what she was there to do, give them an education which is shown through the 100% on a spelling test, the teacher responds by not praising the student but by putting them in their lower social place by having the student eat their test.  Clearly, the historical reservation life was a lot like the short story expressed in Alexie’s novel.  The students were discriminated against and viewed by these teachers as a problem that needs to be taught how to act “white” because that the civilized way.

In the novel, Alexie also describes an Indian boy (who could have been made around experiences Alexie himself experienced or a character established around the lives of other people on his reservation) who was forced to leave his family and go to a reservation boarding school.  That short story narrator, described his experience as “saying good-bye to the (his) tribe, to all the Indian girls and women (he) might have loved, to all the Indian men who might have called (him) cousin, even brother”(Alexie, 176).  This experience explained fits many of the situations experienced by Indians in the mid 1900’s.  Research showed that “boarding school attendance was mandatory”, forcing the children to be removed from their Indian family and required to say good-bye to their life on the reservation, just like the boy explained in the novel (Un. of Minn).

Another similarity of realistic events and the stories in the novel is found in the returning of the students once they have completed their education.  After being away from their reservation lifestyles for year and forced to conform to the Euro-American standards the children are “shaken and frightened because they don’t know what comes next”(Alexie, 180).  Like Indians in real reservations, these characters are forced to return to a life they were forced to forget.  The white Americans “civilize” them by suppressing all the elements of their Indian life then place them back to a world they no longer belong in (Wikipedia).

All of these factors create “Reservation Realism” because the facts are real, not by one person in particular but as the reservation as a whole.  They are one in their culture and traditions which is why they are characterized and identified as one in the novel.  These stories may not be events experienced by one person but they are stories that are part of the reservation.  This writing style expresses the typical lives of Indians as a whole.  They are discriminated against as one throughout history so their stories in this novel are narrated as one.  I view “Reservation Realism” as the stories/facts of the whole Indian Reservation group which is frequent throughout Alexie’s novel.

Work Cited:

·         . "Brief History of Amercian Indian History." Exploring the Circle. Regents of University of Minnesota, 09 25 2012. Web. 30 Sep 2012. <http://etc.umn.edu/resources/briefhistory.htm>.

·         . "Sherman Alexie." Wikipedia. N.p., 09 29 2012. Web. 30 Sep 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Alexie>.

·         . "Wikipedia." Native American boarding school. N.p., 09 27 2012. Web. 30 Sep 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_boarding_schools>.