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Sherman Alexie's Influence On Education

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The first time one is able to comprehend the meaning of a word is a momentous childhood moment that is forever engraved in one’s memory. Books and reading are significantly impactful to people’s lives; Mark Twain said that, “books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.” This statement is apropo for Sherman Alexie, who was a Native American living on a reservation during the time he learned to read. Sherman Alexie convinces his audience that an education is crucial to being successful by using personal anecdotes to captivate and create a connection with his audience and repetition to reiterate the importance of having an education. Alexie's use of personal anecdotes fortifies the impact he has on his audience. Alexie's personal …show more content…

He states, “I was smart. I was arrogant. I was lucky. I was trying to save my life.” Alexie first introduces this point when he expresses how life was like growing up on a Native American reservation and his desire to succeed. Later, he goes to a Native American reservation and attempts to make a breakthrough with the students. At this point, he repeats the same phrase, however, he changes it to, “I am smart. I am arrogant. I am lucky. I am trying to save our lives.” He changes the ‘my life’ to ‘our lives’ because he is conveying how he wishes to change not only his life, but the lives of the Native American children he meets. Alexie's use of repetition effectively shows the recurring theme of his desire for success. He introduces and reintroduces this phrase at two critical moments in the story. He placed the phrase correctly at two points in the story because both points discuss the same central idea of succeeding and Alexie's motivation for success. The difference, however, is that the first point refers to success in his own life, and the second point refers to success in the lives of the Native American children. Alexie's repetition also evokes emotion from the reader. The reader immediately becomes interested in Alexie's life. When he uses the same phrase he used to relate to his life and talk about the Native American children, the reader feels

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They are trying to save their lives.” Although Sherman Alexie’s success seems as if it has only opened up doors for himself it did not, it opened up doors for other Indian kids that are still on the reservation. When Sherman Alexie wrote his books and poems the kids on the reservation read them. They gave them hope, he gave them a reason to fight for their lives the way he did. Those kids too started to write their own short stories and found the same joy in learning that Sherman Alexie did.

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