Sherman Alexie's 'Superman And Me'

2. The verb that Alexie repeats is “read.” He is emphasizing his determination to overcome the standards of the past. Through the repetitions, you come to learn he loved reading, and you learn of the mountains he climbed to stay with

Have you heard of Superman and his strange ways well here is a texet and how the

Alexie wants to show how he is affected by racism in his time and how even though there have been laws passed not to discriminate against people. Whenever police brutality is a main issue in today's era, then that means that racism has not been resolved. Alexie is proving the issue and proving that it has permanently scarred people to where they can’t fall asleep knowing they will be okay in the morning. Whereas the people that are causing this to people of colored decent, sleep as if nothing had happened to them and they are not even realizing how much hurt they are causing other people.

King claims that reading extensively makes for a better writer as through good and bad literature allows a writer to reflect on his own writing and improve his style. Yet Alexie rather is empowered quite differently by the knowledge he gains in reading literature. Alexie went against the stereotype for Indians at the time which still affects not only Indians but non-Indians as well. He is trying to make a point as to why he did not fail in the non-Indian world and that he deserved to succeed given how desperate he felt at times yet he did not accept fate given that he was considered “dangerous” (17). In doing so he works to change and save the lives of Indian kids but is unable to do so for all of them. He says, “They stare out the window. They refuse and resist. ‘Books,’ I say to them. ‘Books,’ I say” (18). Though the idea of empowerment may not be the same, it came from one source – books. This is how “a novel like The Grapes of Wrath may fill a new writer with feelings to…work harder and aim higher” (222), according to King, while a young Alexie “read “Grapes of Wrath” in kindergarten when other children are struggling through “Dick and Jane”” (17). Furthermore, Alexie stood out in a society which rather put him down for his race, which is not an equal comparison to how King stands out for social norms where he would rather read a novel “at meals” which “is considered

As he grew up to become a writer, we see pain in the story he tells. “I loved those books, but I also knew that love had only one purpose. I was trying to save my life” (pg.18). Alexie wanted to be someone greater than what others expected him to be. People would put him down constantly, but he fought back just as much. He tried to save himself from the stereotypes of being just another dumb Indian. He had more determination to prove others wrong when it came too exceeding in reading to further excel in his daily life.

This side story makes the book more realistic to its audience, all the while showing real life

There are some children, like the Indian boy in the short story that will simply not be given a chance to learn how to read and must adapt quickly to survive. Alexie took his fate into his own hands at an early age. Although the author never states the age of the boy, we are to imagine he is grade school age. Alexie states that the boy’s father had an extensive book collection from which he had taught himself how to read, but never mentions if the father had helped his son to learn to read. I imagine the father was too busy trying to support his family by working minimum wage jobs and finding work where he could find it. Needless to say, Alexie adapted well given his situation. These experiences give him accreditation with the reader,

At the very end of the poem both Alexie and the man were stopped at a light. But, they both ended up going different directions. Alexie did not do anything about the man and came to realize that there is nothing that he could have done. This man is already the way that he is and there's nothing that alexie could do about that. The last stanza of the poem states "why do poets think they can save the world? The only life I can save is my own.” What Alexie means by this, is that many people think that they can do things that isn't in their power to do. Some people are just the way that they are. Even if Alexie were to have said something to the man or tried to fix the problem, the man will never be fixed from the way that he is. How does he know he won't continue to do it again. In this poem, there was only so much that he had control of, and that was going home and doing something that he was good at, in the process of helping other people remember the same thing. He couldn’t save the man but he could consider to change himself. I think that this relates thoroughly to Alexies home life. Alexie had no control over the family that he was brought into let alone the type of parents that he was conceived from. With his mom gone most of the time due to work, and his dad being absent due to his alcohol addiction, Aleixe was forced to figure out his life pretty much on his own. I think that this poem really describes

Introducing the aspect of knowledge through the letters, the book shows the dangerous side of knowledge through a journey.

They would make him stay quiet in class because most of them did not like to speak during class with their non-Indian teacher. Even though at home they would talk nonstop about anything. These kids did not grow up to have opportunities they could have had because they were not given a proper education. The non-Indian teachers did not push the kids to learn and they did not care about their student's education. The kids knew that they were expected to fail with their education, and they grew up knowing it was okay to fail because they were Indian. However, Alexie did not accept that. He knew he could pass and that he was smart, so he challenged himself to learn out of the classroom. Reading became the center of his education; he read late into the night, at recess, during lunch, after class, and whenever he could make time to. As a boy he read everything he could find with words on it including all the books his dad had at home, newspapers, library books, cereal boxes, posters, manuals. Even though he loved books he knew reading saved his education and his entire life. His future was opened up to new opportunities because he was educated.

Alexie's father was the reason he began to read which later became his passion. His father loved to read, and even though they did not have a ton of money, his father went out of his way to stock up on books. One-day Alexie decided to pick up one of his father's books and taught himself how to read. Before that, he had never read a book and could not even understand the words. A paragraph intrigued him; each house on the reservation was a paragraph, and each member of his family was a paragraph. The family members were separate people; however, there were still related making all of them together an essay. Then there was the Superman comic book he picked up one day. Although he could not read the panels of words the illustrations told the story. He would make up a story to go with the pictures and pretend to read the panels. Looking back at these times Alexie realized how lucky he was growing up with all these resources to teach

He even explains this when he says, “My father loved books, and since I loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well” (Alexie 279). Alexie’s upbringing shows the reader that he was not wealthy, but he was still able to be exposed to massive amounts of literature and therefore could contribute to his education. His family’s wealth could be attributed to less opportunity in life, but in this case, it was not.

In the beginning of the essay, Alexie talks about how knowledge is a power that opens a window to success by using an anecdote about his personal experience with knowledge. As Alexie talks about his childhood in the beginning, he says, “We lived on a combination of irregular paychecks, hope, fear and government surplus food...” (Alexie). When Alexie discusses the conditions his family lived in, he is setting this frame of pity that makes the reader understand that education wasn’t the first thing on their mind, but what they we’re going to eat next. Later on in the beginning, Alexie explains how his father surrounded him with books and how his love for books started. His love for books was sparked from the love his father had for books. Alexie states this when he says, “...My father loved books...I loved my father...I decided to love books as well...” (Alexie). Alexie also explains how he didn’t understand at first when he first picked up a book but soon learned that “The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose...this knowledge delighted me. I began to think of everything in terms of paragraphs...”(Alexie). This could be seen as a power because although he doesn’t understand, he’s learning how to understand what he’s reading and this could count as one of his first steps to success. As Alexie explains his personal experience with knowledge, he proves how he is an example of

While Alexie states his voice by using metaphor, he emphasizes the meaning of reading repeatedly in his essay. He stresses how he strives to read variety of books, and he records that,” I read the books my father brought home from the pawnshops and secondhand. I read the books I borrowed from the library. I read the backs of cereal boxes… I read magazines. I read anything that had words and paragraphs” (18). Alexie lists out all the material he has read with the same sentence structure, yet he does not conclude all these things in one sentence. He exemplifies his passion to reading, for he tries to save his life. Due to his parallel repetition, Alexie impresses the audience by these

Growing up as a Native American boy on a reservation, Sherman Alexie was not expected to succeed outside of his reservation home. The expectations for Native American children were not very high, but Alexie burst out of the stereotype and expectations put by white men. Young Native Americans were not expected to overcome their stereotypes and were forced to succumb to low levels of reading and writing “he was expected to fail in a non-Indian world” (Alexie 3), but Alexie was born with a passion for reading and writing, so much so that he taught himself to read at age three by simply looking at images in Marvel comics and piecing the words and pictures together. No young Native American had made it out of his reservation to become a successful writer like he did. This fabricates a clear ethos for Alexie, he is a perfect underdog in an imperfect world.