Best Friends to Enemies What happens when choices are made even when knowing the consequences? The short story “Valediction” by Sherman Alexie is about two boys who start stealing from a store until one backs out realizing what they were doing wasn’t right leaving the other to face consequences. The theme Alexie is trying to get through in this short story is that making choices while knowing the consequences can affect relationships and reputations with people. He is able to get his theme across through the usage of juxtaposition, point of view, and foreshadowing. In Valediction, juxtaposition is used to contrast Peter and John. When the boys first started stealing, they both continued doing it for a week until Peter said, “We have to stop. We’re going to get caught. They’ll kick us off the team. They might throw us out of school” (1). but John didn't listen to Peter and wanted to continue stealing thinking he wouldn’t get caught. This shows that Peter was smart enough …show more content…
When Peter backs out while John continues stealing, the action hints that something bad was going to happen. The story is told from Peter’s point of view and when we find out that John told the principal that Peter wasn’t involved and that only he stole things from the store it sort of makes readers wonder why John would do that. We also find out that people at the school thought that John had betrayed Peter by shoplifting without knowing the whole truth, ruining John’s reputation. Towards the end of the story, foreshadowing is used again during the school's camping trip. Peter mentions that John had gotten drunk and “threw his beer into the fire”(3) hinting that something bad was going to happen. These little details in the story hint that Peter and John’s friendship had been completely ruined and it would take a miracle to build up their friendship back to what it was before the whole