Indian Education by Sherman Alexie Analysis Essay

📌Category: Literature
📌Words: 1017
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 19 September 2021

The short story “Indian Education,” written by Sherman Alexie, follows a boy named Victor through the challenges and hardships he faces during his education. Nonetheless, this story highlights Victor’s ability to ultimately overcome the hardships suffered during his early years due to his Indian heritage and displays how Native Americans suffered from adversity. Starvation, camaraderie, resilience, and discrimination are all weaved into the story, illustrating how tough life was for Victor growing up on a reservation. 

Starvation is talked about many times throughout this short story, not only with food but also with education. When living back on the reservation, Victor’s mother would stand in line for hours to receive simple commodities. Often the food they ate was something even dogs would not eat. However, they continued to eat it because it was all that was given to them on the reservation. When Victor goes to a high school away from his reservation, he encounters girls that throw up their food to lose weight, to which Victor asks them for the food if they are solely going to throw it up. To him, the food they are throwing up is something to be thankful for, considering back on the reservation, good food was hard to come by. As stated in this short story, “there is more than one way to starve.” As Victor excels in his classes, many of his classmates receive the bare minimum education. Many of them graduate not knowing how to read or write, and many of them receive diplomas simply for attending class. The more intelligent students are worried as they do not know what will come next. The starvation is metaphorical, as many students on the reservation are starved for a good education. Even the intelligent students are worried they will not succeed in life, given their education on the reservation. Victor is aiming towards his future while others back on the reservation are shaped by tradition. Victor is the only one making progress towards his future, which is credited much to his absence from the reservation. 

Camaraderie is something very vital to the acceleration of Victor’s success. In Victor’s early life, he is constantly bullied by teachers and students and does not form friendships until later years in school.  His first friend emerges when he learns a hard lesson, always throw the first punch when living in the white world. Victor watches Randy break a kid’s nose after the white kid throws some discriminatory phrases his way. Victor sees Randy as his soon-to-be first and best friend due to the strength he sees in this kid when he fights back against discriminatory comments. In ninth grade, after Victor has been off the reservation for a few years, he passes out at a basketball game. Many of his white teammates come to his side, taking him to the hospital, later finding out he has diabetes. During this game, a Chicano teacher blames drinking for his failure to keep playing, saying he knows all about the Indian kids and how they start drinking really young. Victor realizes, “Sharing dark skin doesn’t necessarily make two men brothers.” Brotherhood does not always imply that people who look like you or share your ethnic origin will be your allies. Those that are different from you can, on the other hand, become your support system. Much of what Victor faces make him more resilient. 

Resilience is a theme that is not present until the latter half of the short story. Much of what Victor faces weighs him down in his first few years, but he becomes a better version of himself when he leaves the reservation. Victor went from being a menace to his grade school teachers to valedictorian and star player on the basketball team. His ability to bounce back from his struggles shows just how successful Victor will become. The effect of the reservation on the people living in it seems to be very damaging. When he was in fifth grade, Victor talked about Steven Ford sniffing rubber cement while Victor is focused on making a basket. The contrast between these two characters parallels the disparity we see throughout the story of people living on the reservation and the hardships they face. Victor also obtains his Washington State Driver’s license on the same day that Wally Jim killed himself driving into a tree. This event shows the vast similarities between life on and off the reservation. While Victor is starting his life, someone from the reservation ends theirs. When questioned about the suicide of Wally, many Indians pretend like they do not know why, when in reality, after “they see the history of their tribe, taste failure in the tap water, and shake with old tears,” they completely understand why he did it. Much of the hardships they face come from the reservation and come from the discrimination they face daily. 

Much of Victor’s life is tainted with discrimination. From the time he is in first grade to the moment he graduates, he faces discrimination directly or indirectly throughout his life. During his younger years, many of the kids continuously bully him with little to no punishment. When Victor throws a punch back to one of his bullies, he is immediately sent to the principles office. Moreover, when Victor is in seventh grade, he can finally break away from his reservation and assimilate into everyday life. After he is introduced to a white woman, Victor says that no one spoke to him for the next five hundred years. Alexie, when writing this story, demonstrates the stark isolation to which Native Americans must have felt during this period of time. While the five hundred years is a figure of speech,  discrimination of Native Americans went on far too long and without punishment. Even when Victor has broken away from his past, he is faced with indirect discrimination during his basketball game. After losing the game, the front paper reads, “Indians lose again.” His school is a non reservation high school, so he immediately attributes the lose to him being Indian. Much of Victor’s treatment throughout his education shows disgust of his peers towards his native heritage, an overarching theme throughout this period. Victor faces discrimination in every aspect of his life, whether it be directly or indirectly. 

In this short story following Victor, a Naive American, the writer Alexie focuses on the struggles and challenges people like him faced during this time. Victor ultimately overcomes these challenges to become a successful person, but it comes without it’s hardships. Alexie’s short story highlights starvation, camaraderie, resilience, and discrimination throughout the life of Native Americans.

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