Alexie’s composition of short stories, called The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven, clearly describes aspects of Indian culture that many people wouldn’t already know. The stories are informative, descriptive and interesting. Disappointment is a depressing frustrating and repeated theme throughout almost every one of Sherman Alexie’s short stories. One of the very first introductions of disappointment to the reader is when the father of one of the main characters, Victor, leaves him and his mother “I know he’s coming back tonight. ” (34).
This portrayal of disappointment shows how much pain his father had caused him by just leaving. He couldn’t imagine why he would leave him. Victor stays on the porch the day his dad leaves because it is like part of him will not accept that his father really did leave for good this time and is never coming back. The next disappointment happens soon after when he misses all the shots in the basketball game. “While I looked at all those close-ups of death and destruction, I lost it. I think everybody in that room, everybody on the team, lost that feeling of immortality. (46) Before the time when they were all waiting for the coach and the game to start they started to think how those injuries relate to their situation. “We went out and lost the championship game by twenty points. I missed every shot I took. I missed everything. ” (47) The coach showed up late not bothering to give a pep talk or any encouragement. When Victor is much older disappointment strikes again, he loses his job and also finds out his father is dead. “Just after Victor lost his job at the BIA, he also found out that his father had died of a heart attack in Phoenix, Arizona. (59) It is a sad and disappointing time to lose a job, but it is much worse to lose a loved one that was close to you even though he hadn’t seen his father for a while.
The Essay on Getting a part time job while at school
I have achieved a quite number of things in life at my age of which some I did not expect, but was by God’s mercy, and what I realized is that it is not good to be discriminative when it comes to getting a job because it is from that job that one can advance to another. When I was still a high school student, I used to have money problems. My parents used to give me money, but it was never enough ...
“Victor hadn’t seen his father in a few years, only talked to him on the phone once or twice, but there was still a genetic pain which was soon to be pain as real and immediate as a broken bone. ” (59) Both of these things that happened to him will be very painful when they finally settle in. In another one of Sherman Alexie’s stories one of the main characters, Samuel, gets fired. Samuel hadn’t ever been fired from a job and he had never been in a bar, either. ” (133) the fact that he hasn’t been in a bar before and he doesn’t drink because he saw the impact of alcoholism it had on his brothers, sisters and most of his tribe. This just shows how unsure of himself and disappointed he is because he is doing something he never would have if he still had that job. “Sometimes it’s called passing out and sometimes it’s just pretending to be asleep. ” (138) when he was on the train tracks he had the strength to get up and move.
He chose to lay there and die. He was so unhappy with his life because he was alone, no family, no job, nothing to live for anymore. This book was kind of sad. Disappointment is a depressing, frustrating and repeated theme throughout almost every one of Sherman Alexie’s short stories. Most of the characters in Alexie’s stories encountered some form of disappointment. All of their pain was mental, sometimes worse than physical pain. Some of them overcame it and it was all happy in the end and others like Samuel felt no reason to live.
