...Brandi Charlot March 8, 2015 Introduction to Literature Powerless Colors An Analysis of Sherman Alexie’s “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” and Langston Hughes’ “On the Road” Alice Walker stated, “the most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” Power is a mental attribute. Many people put boundaries around themselves. These self-imposed boundaries result in anguish, despair, pity, and ultimately a sense of powerlessness. Sometimes these boundaries are not only self-imposed, but society-imposed. The protagonists in Sherman Alexie’s “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” and Langston Hughes’ “One the Road both suffer through a state of powerlessness imposed on them by a racial prejudice society. This state of powerlessness provides both a physical and mental effect upon the protagonists. Victor, the protagonist in “The Long Ranger,” is a Native-American man that lives in Seattle, Washington. He lives with his girlfriend (who is a white woman) and drinks frequently. He is unemployed and eventually moves back to his reservation. Sargeant, the protagonist in “On the Road,” is a Black-American man. He is unemployed and looks for salvation at a church. The church refuses his pleas. He acts in rage, and subsequently, he is arrested and jailed. Racism in America has a long-standing tradition from the “March of Tears” to “Bloody Sunday.” Racism is “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics...
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...Matthew R. Collins Kaitlin McClanahan English 102 12 March 2015 Defective Education System in Native American Reservation and Its Impacts Native Americans have suffered through many issues since they lost their lands to the U.S. government. Especially the Indian teenagers, they are not only losing their traditional culture, but also a proper environment for them to get education and be prepared for life. In Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, he uses two teenagers’ scope to describe the life in Native American reservation in Spokane. The two boys, Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-the-Fire, tell the stories of conflicts with family members and struggles among their peers. In Indian education, Victor narratively tells the fights, discrimination and confusion he and his friends went through. High rate of violence, substance abuse and mental health problems appear among Indian students in the reservation schools. It is clear that the defective education system and school environment in Native American reservations leads to those severe issues. Violence is one of the key issues that appear in Native American reservation schools. In Indian Education from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, the main character Victor witnessed a fight between Randy, the new Indian kid, and Steve. Randy was transferred from a white town. Within an hour after he first arrived his new school, Steve Flett picked on him by calling him names. Many students gathered...
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...Resources for Teaching Prepared by Lynette Ledoux Copyright © 2007 by Bedford/St. Martin’s All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. 2 1 f e 0 9 d c 8 7 b a For information, write: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 75 Arlington Street, Boston, MA 02116 (617-399-4000) ISBN-10: 0–312–44705–1 ISBN-13: 978–0–312–44705–2 Instructors who have adopted Rereading America, Seventh Edition, as a textbook for a course are authorized to duplicate portions of this manual for their students. Preface This isn’t really a teacher’s manual, not, at least, in the sense of a catechism of questions and correct answers and interpretations. Because the questions provided after each selection in Rereading America are meant to stimulate dialogue and debate — to generate rather than terminate discourse — they rarely lend themselves to a single appropriate response. So, while we’ll try to clarify what we had in mind when framing a few of the knottier questions, we won’t be offering you a list of “right” answers. Instead, regard this manual as your personal support group. Since the publication of the first edition, we’ve had the chance to learn from the experiences of hundreds of instructors nationwide, and we’d like to use this manual as a forum where we can share some of their concerns, suggestions, experiments, and hints. We’ll begin with a roundtable on issues you’ll probably want to address before you meet your class. In the first section of this manual, we’ll discuss approaches to...
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