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Analysis of Tony's Story

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Tony’s story

Literary analysis of the short story “Tony’s story” by Leslie Silko.

Tony’s story is about two indian boys. One of them, named Leon, has just arrived back to the pueblo from the army. The other one is called Tony. The story takes place in the middle of the summer. On San Lorenzo’s day, a holiday, Leon suddenly gets hit by a cop, without any reason. Afterwards, Leon is of course upset about the incident -“I’ll kill the big basterd if he comes around here again”, Leon kept saying.” (p. 2, l. 12). Tony keeps telling Leon, that he should just forget about the incident, but Leon won’t let it g o. On the night of the incident, Tony has a nightmare involving a witch (p. 2, l. 5), wich he keeps refering to as being the cop.
The …show more content…

If the narrator was all-knowing, then is would be a completely different story, for example, we might have seen Tony’s madness more early in the story.

Characterization
The characters in the story, Leon and Tony, is described indirectly by the author.
Tony is an indian. In the beginning, you get the impression, that he is a sweet, innocent and caring boy. He’s very helpful but also very naive. Through the story, it gets more and more clear, that there is something mentally wrong with Tony. He keeps believing, that the cop is something that his parents warned him about in his childhood, wich he calls ‘a masked dancer’. His parents told him not to look into the eyes, so in Tony’s head, the cop’s sunglasses equals the masked dancer’s mask. And Tony ends up killing the cop, and telling Leon that everything is O.K., it’s killed, they somethimes take on strange forms. He also compares the cop’s raised billy club to the witch’s raised human-bone in his dream.

Leon is also an indian, who has just returned from the army. Leon seems more clever than Tony, and is more aware of the outside world. As Tony only focusses on the tribe, Leon knows about the outside world. He knows what his rights are, and that is why he stands up against the cop, and tries to get something done about the violence incident in the beginning.

Time, place and setting
The time, plave and setting is important to the story, to understand what is going on. I’m guessing that the indians didn’t have

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