Use Of Imagery In The Lone Ranger And The Tonto Fistfight In Heaven

Negative Liquid Imagery
Alcohol is used to create an emotional storm inside ones mind and blurring problems together making reality and fantasy coincide. This helps establish a false security. This false pretense creates an even deeper problem that is harder to solve. In The Lone Ranger and the Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie uses liquid imagery to convey the positive and negative aspects of Victor’s life on the Indian reservation.
Storms in this novel represent the pain and hardships Victor faces by being colonized and subjected to live a life where his traditions are not present. Even though this is a constant struggle he faces, Victor demonstrates his resilience by living with the influence of American culture on the reservation.

This is a paradox because the Indians think they are escaping by drinking. They perpetuate that drinking makes them feel great, when in reality it makes them feel worse. When Victor watches the way the Indians drink he compares them to weather-like conditions, “The forecast was not good. The Indians continued to drink, harder and harder, as if anticipating. There’s a fifty percent chance of torrential rain, blizzard like conditions, seismic activity. Then there’s a sixty percent chance, then seventy, eighty” (8). This proves that alcohol is used as a coping mechanism. Furthermore, this demonstrates the “anticipation” the Indians have to get away from the forcefulness of the American culture. They way alcohol is used correlates to the way Indians drink to gear up for the weather in the same manner people prepare for bad weather. Revealing that these Indians prepare for their struggles in life (to the storm) and continue to add to their pain by drinking to survive these storms. Then, Victor goes onto explain the repugnant hug he gives Adolph and says, “I gave Adolph a hug, gagged at his smell. Alcohol and sweat. Cigarettes and failure” (9). Victor compares these literal depictions of liquids to failure and disgust. To illustrate the way he feels about alcohol and what it makes you become. Moreover, Victor demonstrates his personal encounter with alcohol when he nearly has a

This is explored when Victor and his friends go out to the lake, “it is now. Three Indian boys are drinking Diet Pepsi and talking out by Benjamin lake…Although it is the twentieth century and planes are passing overhead, the Indian boys have decided to be real Indians tonight.” (20). This is a paradox because they go out to the lake, yet there is planes flying overhead and Pepsi in their hands which emphasizes the heavy influence of the western culture. Which stresses the opposing forces: The indigenous vs. the colonizers. The Indians suggest that they are struggling with finding balance between westernized society and their true Indian identities because of the influence of American culture. The Indians are seen to be straddling westernized culture through their frequent choice of beverage: Diet Pepsi. “Hey we don’t drink no more, remember? How about a diet Pepsi? Adrian and I sat on the porch and watched the reservation. Nothing happened…We could see that the only traffic signal on the reservation had stopped working.” (44) This represents the colonialism between Americans and the Indians. Americans made the indigenous assimilate. Shows the Americans failure of its promise of freedom and how the Native Americans did not always assimilate fully. The fact that the light stopped working shows the festering problems and the decay of society which shows that they are becoming more