Phase 3 Prompt 4

Sherman Alexie portrays the deep longing of young men to be warriors in several of his stories as they have grown to understand the honor of being a warrior and experience the human desire to be needed.

Nearly every little boy in our society, at some point in his childhood, wants to be a fire fighter when he grows up.  Perhaps some want to be an astronaut or the President of the United States!  Our society has taught the younger generation that all of these professions are noble and heroic (and of course they are).  Little boys dream of that recognition and hope of fame.  

I feel like this same dream and hope can be seen in the young Native American men.  These young men have heard stories about warriors and their courageous adventures and lives.  They dream about being as great as the men they’ve heard about for years.  For example, in the second story of the book, Victor is having a vision about stealing horses.  He says, “I needed one of their ponies. I needed to be a hero and earn my name” (15).  In “Indian Education,” Junior’s “little warrior inside [him] roared to life” one day at school when students were picking on him and he “knocked Frenchy to the ground” and beat him up (172).  All the young men want to “receive their true names, their adult names” (20).  There are so many examples of the young men dreaming of being a warrior.

So why do they want this fame and recognition?  I think they want it because they believe they will live a better, happier life with it.  In Native American culture, “the warrior class was the most highly respected class of society” (“Native American”).  People honored and praised them with traditional celebrations and ceremonies.  It is a very prestigious position to be in.  Most of the Indians in Alexie’s book however, seem to be poor and uneducated.  They probably thought they had a very unimportant life and that no one really appreciated them.  This may not be the case for some Indians, but that is the idea I get from Alexie’s descriptions of life on the reservations.  Therefore, knowing about the great lives of warriors and all the fame and recognition that come along with being a warrior, the young men are naturally attracted to that kind of life that they themselves have never had.   They want to be important just like the little boys we know who want to be fire fighters when they grow up.  Humans have a strong, natural desire to be loved and needed and that is exactly what is happening here.

There is one problem, however.  The characters discuss airplanes and higher technology equipment so I believe the story is set in the later 20^th century.  It may be a little hard for the young men to go out and kill a large animal or steal something to earn their adult name.  In the stories of warriors that these young men have heard, the warriors lived in a time of little civilization where they traveled the land with the animals and fought to survive.  They had a better opportunity to become a warrior.  In the late 20^th century, with towns and private property and laws, it is a little harder for these young men to fulfill their dreams of becoming a great warrior.  Perhaps this is why they view basketball as such an amazing skill.  It is one of the few things they can do to gain warrior status.  In fact, Norma even states in her newspaper article about Junior’s game winning move, that “…Junior has earned  a couple points more on the Warrior Scale” (206).  But back to the point, there are not many chances for these Indians to become true warriors.  While they dream so passionately of becoming a warrior, their surroundings and the present world hinder this desire.

As Thomas explains in one of his stories, “‘We are all given one thing by which our lives are measured, one determination’” (72).  I feel like all the young Native American men would agree with this and want their one determination to be something extraordinary that will prove their warrior status and improve their lives.

Work Cited:

“Native American Indians Warriors”. Country Facts: The World at Your Fingertips. Country Facts and Information, 2004. Web. 23 Sept. 2012. <http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/articles/usa/Native-American-Indians-Warriors/2283>.