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Sherman Alexie's 'What You Pawn I Will Redeem'

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Jackson Jackson is a homeless Spokane Indian that happened upon his Grandmothers Indian dance regalia at a pawn shop. Jackson continuously throughout the story displays internal struggles and conflicts (the struggle that shapes the plot in the story) between battling alcoholism and making poor behavior choices that work against his quest to earn money to retrieve the regalia to reclaim a part of his family heritage. Jackson has an internal desire to want to do right, but his poor choices that he exhibits contribute to his persona to solidify his choice to embrace social alienation. The poor choice’s Jackson makes alienate him from society but also drives his desire to belong to a group. Indians are often displaced, which is a common theme that is shared among Indians is their loss of land, heritage, culture and independence. Examining Jackson’s antics, his associations …show more content…

Homeless Indians are common in the Seattle, WA area (Troyer, 2008). Jackson Jackson, the main character in “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” written by Sherman Alexie (2003) had been married several times and had several kids before he became homeless. His logic is “One day you have a home and the next you don’t…because it’s my secret story, and Indians have to work hard to keep secrets from hungry white folks (Alexie, 2003). Jackson stated he just disappeared into homelessness and had stayed that way for the duration of six years. Jackson mentions a man he spoke to that he is very suspicious of because he only identifies himself as a Plains Indian.

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He shares his story about how he moved to Seattle, Washington, to attend college, but he flunked out and he “went crazy” (1). The story suggests that Jackson spiraled into alcoholism slowly as he lost sense of his identity, disappearing “piece by piece” (1). As a Native American that lived on the Spokane reservation, Jackson’s struggle began when he left for college in Settle, Washington. An internal struggle that led to alcoholism, and a loss of identity was perhaps caused because Jackson was not in a familiar environment. In this different environment Jackson may have felt out of place, and this slowly led him to losing his identity.

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In his book the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie portrays a teenage boy, Arnold Spirit (junior) living in white man’s world, and he must struggle to overcome racism and stereotypes if he must achieve his dreams. In the book, Junior faces a myriad of misfortunes at his former school in ‘the rez’ (reservation), which occurs as he struggles to escape from racial and stereotypical expectations about Indians. For Junior he must weigh between accepting what is expected of him as an Indian or fight against those forces and proof his peers and teachers wrong. Therefore, from the time Junior is in school at reservation up to the time he decides to attend a neighboring school in Rearden, we see a teenager who is facing tough consequences for attempting to go against the racial stereotypes.

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