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Code Talker By Joseph Bruchac: An Analysis

417 Words2 Pages
In the novel, Code Talker by Joseph Bruchac, the literary conflict of Man versus Society and the importance of the Navajo code talkers highlights the theme of racial equality, the qualities that determine character are not the ones on the outside, but the ones on the inside, through internal and external examples. During mission school, the white people taught the Navajos that the white people know everything. This concrete detail explains that white people thought they were superior to the Native Americans. The bilagaanaas, or white people, thought their culture was better than the Navajos’, but the Navajos’ culture aided in the success of World War II. Ned had realized that the bilagaanaas were not born knowing everything, white men, were
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Code Talker by Joseph Bruchac is a book centered around the Navajo Indians in WWII. The Navajos were forced to live on reservations, their only option to further their education and broaden their opportunities were to leave the tribe or to join the military. Caucasian Americans at the time were very stereotypical towards the Navajos, they believed they were drunk, uneducated, wild savages. Caucasian Americans were guilty of only hearing a single story of how their ancestors took the land from the Indians who weren't deserving of it. Non Indians believed they rightfully used the land and saved it from wild savages destroying the land.

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Through his role as an ambassador and a leader, the Comanche Chief was able to establish a middle ground for effective communication between the white men of the west and the Comanche tribe without forfeiting significant facets of his tribe’s culture. In ways that kept intact the cultural identity of the Comanche people, Parker acted as a “cultural broker” who actively sought ways in which the white men and native people could work towards a common ground. To understand Parker’s role as the chief of the Comanche people, it is imperative to comprehend the aspects of a “cultural broker”. The responsibility of a cultural broker is to facilitate the cultural exchange between a group of people to another group of people.

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In Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie, Alexie’s father’s love for books grew to make his self-love books ending up in Alexie teaching himself how to read. Alexie describes the stereotypes and what is expected of Indian children and how Indian children were expected to basically have no knowledge Many lived up to those expectations inside the classroom but invalidated them on the outside. While other children were doing this, Alexie’s father was one of the few Indians on the reservation who went to Catholic School on purpose and was also an devoted reader. Alexie grew up around books. His father had a strong love for books as he bought them by the pound from pawn shops, goodwill and the salvation army.

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World War II was one of the biggest wars the world has ever witnessed. If the US hadn’t stopped the Japanese and Germans our way of life could be completely different. The balance of the world could be shifted forever. Although many Americans give credit to the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki for ending the war other things or people contributed majorly to the ending of World War II. A code, still undeciphered to this day, should be given major credit for the US’ success during the war.

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Navajo Code talkers were heros to our country and have waited years to be properly acknowledged for their heroic deeds. The unbreakable code based around the Navajo language and the language is one of the hardest to learn. The code had 411 terms that the Navajos turned words into military terms. The code was never broken even after the War. The Navajos life before the war consisting them never leaving there reservations.

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Stereotypes can be harmful to those they pertain to, as they can contain false negative connotations that have the power to demonize entire groups of people. The formation of a negative stereotype could result from the events at the powwow near the novel’s conclusion, as the acts of violence and robbery committed by Native people against other Native people could reflect negatively on the entire community. The acts committed by a small number of the population could make the entire community appear to be unsympathetic and violent to an outsider who will not take the time to understand the community as a whole. Evidence of this lack of interest in other cultures can be seen when Tony talks to a white woman on the train. He invites her to attend the powwow, but she makes an excuse, and he stops listening to her speak because he knows that, “People don’t want any more than a little story they can bring back with them, to tell their friends and family around the dinner table, to talk about how they saw a real Native American boy on a train, that they still exist” (Orange 235).

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The book challenges Americans and how they treat American Values. The book exposed the truth of the white race and how they treated the black race. Throughout the novel white Americans did not value equality or progress and change. In Black Like Me whites did not believe in having a society the ideally treats everyone equally. When John Howard Griffin gets a ride from a white hunter, he tells him “I’ll tell you how it is here.

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