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Comparing The Lone Ranger And Tonto Fistfight In Heaven By Sherman Alexie

869 Words4 Pages

Imagination is the act of forming new ideas, images, or concepts of external objects not present to what is currently happening. In the novel, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie includes a series of short stories that use numerous literary device to express a variety of things. In the story “Imagining The Reservation”, Alexie uses setting to express the fact that both imagination, and the expression of creativity are what give Native Americans the ability to overcome the incredible devastation that they face. Setting is the literary device most frequently used in the novel, particularly in this short story. It is evident even in the title that the reservation is supposed to be a focal point of the story. Alexie …show more content…

While young, Victor visits a bar on the reservation. Within the bar their is a fortune teller.The fortune teller tells Victor that the twenty dollar bill in his pocket would “change his life.” Victor has his doubts, but chooses to have his fortune read in order to spark hope for what lays ahead.”The Indian child told Lester that his heart was buried at the base of a pine tree behind the trading post. The Indian child told me to break every mirror in my house and tape the pieces to my body. I followed his vision and the Indian child laughed when he saw me, reflecting every last word of the story.”(151) Victor did what the Indian child told him. He did this because he imagines that taping those mirrors on him would help him have a better life,as he was told. He does this because his imagination leads him to believe that anything can be a component in the act of changing his life, no matter how ridiculous it may seem. This shows the great lengths Native Americans go through in order to even have a slight chance of improving their lives.Setting is used in order to show the type of people that would be getting their fortunes told. At the bar lingered many children, and alcoholics.These people were generally more willing to participate in acts such as fortune telling, which lead them to be

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“Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” Serious matters are usually addressed very seriously in many works of literature, but the times that they are not, authors use humor to reach their audience. Comedy is usually reserved for things that are funny yet Sherman Alexie successfully uses it in his day-to-day writing and has become an influential writer. In “Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven”, Alexie focuses on very serious themes, such as racism and domestic violence, he is able to explore these themes by using humor. Alexie believes that he can speak to any audience of any political persuasion because he has the ability to make people laugh. Sherman Alexie’s literatures are almost always based on the Native American people and

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