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Coping With Death In Sherman Alexie's War Dances

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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 …show more content…

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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In Sherman Alexie’s short story, “War Dances,” the narrator unravels in thoughts and takes us through events in his life. He picks up by speaking about a cockroach that ends up dying in his Kafka baggage from a trip to Los Angeles. The cockroach still appears many times throughout the story. The narrator spends quality time in the hospital with his father, who is recovering from surgery due to diabetes and alcoholism, all along the way while he, himself, discovers he might have a brain tumor, leading his right ear to talk about his father. Using a style of tragedy and care both incorporate together a symbolic story that would make even a plain reader feel touched, leading to the major occurrence of a theme of the importance of family.

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Under brutal circumstances of warfare, people have decided soldiers’ manipulated perspectives was subsequent to violence. In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, readers are introduced to the protagonist named Billy Pilgrim, a cowardly soldier that witnessed the firebombing of Dresden. Moreover, Tim O’Brien was a character throughout his own story The Things They Carried, he, too provided insight on (admittedly made-up) events that occurred during his time at Vietnam. In spite of these two soldiers having completely opposite experiences, the reality of war is the fact that encountering death on a regular basis would drive one to blatantly accept it or become numb towards it. To be specific, from Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut showcases numbness towards death through Billy Pilgrim.

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This tells the story of Johnny Gunther, who died on June 30, 1947, at only seventeen years old. His father wrote this to help others learn more about the effects of a brain tumor. Despite this, he loved to learn and even attended Harvard, where no one knew of his illness until a year and 3 months before his death. Also, this book offers a glimpse of his life before his illness and the decline that led to his death. According to his father Johnny’s death made a huge impact on the world, because letters came by the hundreds and his case was extremely rare as he maintained good eyesight and kept well right up to the point of death.

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