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This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix Arizona Analysis

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“Victor was ashamed of himself. Whatever happened to the tribal ties, the sense of community? The only real thing he shared with anybody was a bottle and broken dreams. He owed Thomas something, anything.” At the beginning of Sherman Alexie’s “This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona,” Victor is faced with the task of bringing his father’s remains back to the reservation where he lives. He describes Thomas Builds-the-Fire as “a storyteller that nobody wanted to listen to,” but he ends up traveling with Thomas to bring his father’s remains back to the reservation. While he travels with Thomas, he begins to remember the relationship that the boys shared growing, and begins to earn a new respect for Thomas. Victor is reminded of the importance of tradition when he learns of how his father helped Thomas when he was following a dream. Victor sees the importance of memories and ties to people as he returns home with his father’s ashes. Victor’s time with Thomas, and Thomas’s views on tradition teach him much …show more content…

Victor admitted that he wasn’t close to his father because he hadn’t spoken to him for a few years. He seems to have similar difficulties with the rest of his family as “...the rest of the family didn’t have any use at all for him.” He doesn’t seem to cling to the people close to him or have valuable relationships. When he runs into Thomas, he receives the offer of help traveling to Phoenix from Thomas. There is the first glimpse into the relationship between the two men as we are shown a flashback of the two of them at ten years old. They were friends and shared good times, but this feeling hasn’t remained for Thomas. He hasn’t kept that connections and those ties with Thomas because he really doesn’t want to travel with him. His attitude when he accepts the offer shows his lack of relationship

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No matter how hard he struggled, Victor couldn’t pull free. He might have died right there, stung a thousand times, if Thomas Builds-The-Fire had not come along.” He didn’t freak out when the wasp nest got stuck on his foot. Ultimately, Victor dealt with all the bad situations that got put in his

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Victor waited for him and when Thomas came out they had bro moment which showed that these two Characters became somewhat

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Victor is described to be ashamed by the look of Thomas with "ratty old braids and broken teeth" holding a conversation with a "beautiful Olympic gymnast" (Alexie 277). The contact Thomas has with the women symbolizes the uneasy relation Native American communities have with the outside world. While Victor does have a moment of pride when he quickly tells the women that he is a "'Full-blood'" Indian, the encounter ends with Victor saying "'it's too bad we can't always be that way'" (Alexie 277). This foreshadowing event aims to convey the idea that Victor is aware that in other social circumstances he would hide being a Native American, but also shows the priming of his ability to be proud of his

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In the story “What it means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” by Sherman Alexie, two young Native American men living on the Coeur D 'Alene Indian Reservation in Plummer, Idaho, named Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-the-Fire travel to Arizona to retrieve Victor’s absent father’s ashes. Victor’s father, Arnold, saved Thomas from a house fire when he was a baby, where both of Thomas’s parents died. This tragic event caused Arnold’s alcoholism to spiral into an extreme state, making him an abusive drunk. He abandons Victor and his mother when Victor is a young boy, and leaves the reservation for good.

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Throughout the journey you see Victor’s resentment towards his father. You see this through the flashbacks of Victor’s good and bad memories with his father. Victor’s father has shown to be an alcoholic, having parties and drinking beer all the

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915 Words | 4 Pages

The two cousins’ friendship can be seen when looking back on a memory of when they were ten years old watching the fireworks together and Thomas was telling Victor a story that ended with “when they got back, all their friends cheered, and their parents’ eyes shown bright with pride, you were very brave everyone said to the two Indian boys [Alexie 4]”. Growing up on a small reservation it is safe to presume all the children around the same age grew up together, and knew one another, especially if the two children were related. Thomas is even including Victor in his fairy tale legend of two Indian boys wanting to be warriors, which shows at one time they were really close, and enjoyed each other’s company. As more memories are shared, and the two cousins get older, the distance between them starts to show. When they were fifteen, Victor was really drunk and beat Thomas for no reason at all, as all the other Indian boys stood around and watched [Alexia 4].

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This evidently explains the clash of thoughts between Thomas and Victor, and how situational perspective can be. Victor is very biased towards Thomas’ idea of stories because of the difference between the two guys’ cultural identity. Victor has a more modern life. He worked for the BIA, he states his family has no use for him, but he still lives on the reservation. Thomas however, is very rich in his culture.

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“Sherman Alexie is a preeminent Native American poet, novelist, performer and filmmaker. He has garnered high praise for his poems and short stories of contemporary Native American reservation life, among them The Business of Fancydancing (1992), The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven (1993),” (“Sherman Alexie”). In “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” Alexie specifically uses the plot structure to emphasize the storyline and thoroughly applies The Hero’s Journey analysis strategy model to dictate Victor and Thomas’ journey to retrieve Victor’s dad’s belongings. In the beginning, Alexie conforms the plot by opening with the introduction of the characters and their objective(s) to the point of which the hero and mentor reach the sought-after location.

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Major conflicts of the story included the fight between Thomas and Victor, and also he conflict within Victor’s mind as well. The moral of the story is “Treat people as you would want to be treated and never take anyone or granted.” Victor took Thomas for granted and mistreated him because he was different. But in the end it was Thomas that came to his rescue and not only helped him get to phoenix for his father’s possessions, but helped him find his true identity as

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Victor grew up to become a very loving, affectionate and humane individual, due to the love and

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When Thomas tells Victor the story about his journey to Spokane Falls to find Victor’s father, it’s at that point Victor realizes the tie between his father and Thomas and that Thomas is a very important part of Victor’s own story. When he left or abandoned Thomas, he abandoned a part of himself; and this is part of what Victor reclaim. Victor learns from Thomas and in doing so learns about himself and home is similar to the rebirth of a

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(6) Later on, Victor’s father moves away. “ Unfortunately, when he grew older his dad disappears, moves to Phoenix, Arizona and doesn’t come back.” He then finds out his dad had died from a heart attack. In the chapter “This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona,”

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Thomas though, thought of a deeper meaning, because he thought of reality and how they should be hating the holiday. Victor on the other hand just wanted to have fun and not give a thought in the world. That is where the two characters contrast. Thomas wants to really analyze everything he encounters while Victor as a seven year old just wants to do the wildest things and make

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In the end it truly was the lack of love and care from a mother that initiated the similar feelings of loneliness and anger between both characters. Maybe it was the loneliness that drove both of them to become angry and strive for revenge, as we see Victor and his creation are despite the differences resemble fairly the same traits. Driven by the same desires and goals it feeds the want for pain and want for isolation from one another. Isolated by society, abandoned by their childhood figures, and driven by rage. They are extremely remorse and no one can understand Victor’s

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Victor has had supportive people around him since birth; however now that he is at the university he has nobody to help keep him level headed. "Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree; the fall of a leaf startled me, and I shunned my fellow creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime" (35). The isolation being portrayed by Victor is now shifting from not only

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