Foreman By Sherman Alexie Sparknotes

¨Superman and Me¨ is a short story by Sherman Alexie that recounts how he learned to read and the impact it had on his life. Alexie’s ultimate goal in this story is to help and inspire children who are like him. He wants to be a role model for the countless Indian children who are being failed by the current system and who struggle to be Indian in a non-Indian world.
The audience of ¨Superman and Me¨ consists of other Spokane Indians and people unfamiliar with Indian culture. As Alexie states in his short story, to fail in the non-Indian world is expected of Indian children. Alexie refuses to fail and instead he succeeds. Alexie’s underdog tale appeals to everyone, but certain aspects of his story are more identifiable to some groups. The struggle

When he talks about his father and the adoration he had for him and how he first discovered the meaning of paragraphs, the audience is compelled to sympathize with this little, indigent boy. The youth vignette provides context to what life was like for Alexie and strengthens his ethos and pathos. The audience becomes familiar with the struggles Alexie endured as a child as a result of being a successful Indian. He encounters opposition from Indians and non-Indians alike, but writing from a child’s stance makes his work more approachable by both sides. Furthermore, the audience can see from a first hand account the poor conditions and lacking education Alexie received, so when he says he taught himself how to read and advanced to a level school could not foster, the audience understands the magnitude of that accomplishment. It strengthens his credibility because he did not have teacher to help him. He did it himself despite the odds and the

His incredible mastery of pathos is once again revealed when he refers to himself in third person. No longer is the audience in boy Alexie’ mind, but they are seeing the situation unfold from the outside. Although he has overcome the struggle to learn how to read, he still battles the oppression of a system that does not want him to succeed. He refuses to fail like other Indians or conform to what is expected of him. As Alexie declares he “was smart. [He] was arrogant. [He] was lucky” he uses short sentences and parallelism to demonstrate his determination to succeed. These evocative sentences breaks the monotony of the paper and adds variety to his sentence structure. Additionally, they are precursors to Alexie’s commitment to reading. Following those sentences, Alexie proceeds to name everything he read, starting each sentence with “I read.” The anaphora he uses reinforces the difficulty he had in acquiring reading material, but also highlights his perseverance. As it nears the end, the anaphora evokes the poignancy of his childhood because he reads to save his life. Although he is not literally dying, he is being saved from an unfulfilled, dissatisfied life on the reservation by educating himself. His thesis alludes to the ultimate purpose of ¨Superman and Me¨. In spite of the hardships he faced, Alexie does not write