Coping With Death In Sherman Alexie's War Dances
Humans are a fragile species, and we are capable of dying at any moment regardless if we are ready or not. In Sherman Alexie’s “War Dances”, he illustrates the narrator’s coping with death and compares it to that of those around him. Upon figuring out that his death is no longer a looming threat, the narrator goes back to living life as if nothing happened cementing the idea that the threat of death is ever present but we choose to live as if it is not. Throughout the short story, Alexie utilizes the narrator’s experiences with the deaths of others and with the threat of his own to demonstrate the theme that death is always a possibility and there are many ways of coping with it. The narrator is hopeless about fighting his own death but utilizes humor to cope with the idea of dying.
After having an MRI done on his head, the protagonist learns that he has a meningioma. While coming to terms, his personality shines through as he remains hopeless due to the fact that he can do nothing while at the same time maintaining his humor in order to lighten the mood for those around him and
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Upon learning about his tumor, the narrator reveals to his doctor that he feels “freaked and fucked” about his brain tumor that he is incapable of doing anything about. Like his grandfather before him, the narrator is faced with death and is given nothing to fight against it. After the six months are up and it is revealed that the tumor is benign, the narrator resumes his normal life. He reveals that he feels the same as he did before the meningioma. It shows how we react in the face of death but it does not change us. This is because we can die at any moment.
The crisis doesn’t change the protagonist and he only comments on how “I didn’t feel any more intimate with the world nine months after that”. This shows how death is always a possibility and we cannot let it affect us too much. The narrator, when he brushes by death, is not
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