Class Sherman Alexie Analysis

“Class” by Sherman Alexie is a story about a man, Edgar Joseph, on a journey to self-identification. While on this journey he experiences many different tribulations and encounters a multitude of women. The encounters with these women will reveal to the reader his selfless, barbaric, and lost personality. However, the experiences he had with women of his own descent provided a transformative experience that shows what he is looking for and what he truly values. Edgar’s selflessness can be seen through his mother. Edgar wanted to make his mother happy and conforms to her wishes. She always told him that he should marry a white woman so that as generations went by, the Indian part of their heritage would finally be (taken out). He was heavily

Edgar’s character towards his wife becomes barbaric because he forces her to have sex with him and emotionally blackmails her until she gives in to his sexual desires. Towards the end of the story Edgar sees the emptiness in his wife’s one good eye and realizes that she has been this way for a long time. But, instead of consoling her, he gets up and leaves her in bed alone. By doing this, it shows the lack of communication between them, and further exemplifies his barbaric character. This mannerism is also demonstrated after Edgar finds his wife’s lover’s letters in their closet. He unintentionally came across them, so he quietly put them back in their original spot. But, instead of retaliating against her in public and embarrassing her, he decided to buy prostitutes whenever he went out of town. This vengeful mindset expresses how their lack of communication has led him to be cruel towards her and patronize other

Edgar’s encounter with the Indian bartender is his transformational stage. The first feature he notices about her is the scars on her face and knuckles and he concludes that she was probably a fighter, but he next thing he notices is that she was overweight. This order of observance is a small step for Edgar because the first thing he saw about her was not the size of her breasts or whether she was a white woman. However, he does still take note that she is overweight. Edgar unintentionally gets into a fight with another man at the bar that is described to be similar to “Chief Broom from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (pg. 49). Sissy tried to stop the fight before it ever happened, but Edgar decided to go through with the fight to try to prove that he belonged to this group of people. He was so desperate for a bond with someone that he was willing to fight to show that he was worthy to be with this group of Indian people. The fight does not end well and Edgar wakes up in Sissy’s lap in the storeroom. Edgar feels so lost at this point that he reaches out and grabs Sissy’s breast, but Sissy pushes him away. She is the first woman in the story to resist Edgar’s sexual desires. Sissy tells him that he is not a part of their world and he never will be, and she tells him that people like her and Junior would give anything to be a part of Edgar’s world. Edgar finally realizes that he should be