Symbolism In Sherman Alexie's 'Smoke Signals'

Alexie Sherman in “Smoke Signals” describes the way of living of Native Americans. He uses two characters in the movie as Native Americans Victor and Thomas. Thomas’s parents died in the accidental fire on Independence Day in 1976 in Coeur d’Alene, however, Arnold Joseph, Victor's father, saved Thomas from the fire. When Thomas was just blasted out of the window, Victor’s father miraculously caught Thomas before he landed on the ground. Thomas was a nerd who was smart, and he enjoyed telling stories to anyone.

The movie Smoke Signals is a great representation of Durkheim’s theory of religion and the sacred as being social and serving society. As well as a culture’s sacred beliefs and rituals being a symbolic way of a person aligning themselves with their society. Smoke Signals focuses on two individuals, both of whom are Indians of the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation, on a journey where they struggle to hold on to the beliefs and traditions that have enabled them to cope with their difficult pasts. The first part of this essay will provide evidence from the movie to explain how the first individual, Victor Joseph, holds to the belief that an Indian must act like a warrior to receive any respect. Second, this essay will then provide evidence to explain

A Comparison of Navaho and White Mountain Apache Ceremonial Forms and Categories Goodwin, G. (1945). A Comparison of Navaho and White Mountain Apache Ceremonial Forms and Categories. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 1(4), 498-506. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3628795 While this article focuses on comparing Navaho and White Mountain Apache ceremonial forms, the author, Grenville Goodwin, offers extensive details about religious rituals of east-central Arizona's Apache division. In his analysis, Goodwin explains that there are a number of religious ceremonies performed in the White Mountain Apache division, which deal with various situations.

The author moves the history onto another trajectory by investigating the connection between native identity and politics to protect their way of life. Dowd states that tribal religion interconnected with “Indian politics.” Investigating the Pan-Indian movement, Dowd offers historians with a new inquiry, which questions the importance that native religion had in forming an identity in resistance. Examining memoirs and journals, Dowd argues that the visions of the prophets “received revelations” that promoted the nativists’ resistance against Europeans. Dowd reexamines Brown’s argument by focusing on how accommodationists merged native and European traditions together.

The first of its kind, the movie Smoke Signals features a mostly Native American cast, and is both written and directed by a descendent of the Cheyenne-Arapaho Native Americans. The movie begins on the Coeur D'Alene Native American reservation (or "the rez" as it is called in the movie) in Idaho, where the importance of the culture of the Coeur D'Alene Native Americans becomes immediately apparent in the first few scenes. In fact, one of the first scenes is completely told in the Native American oral tradition of storytelling, which continues to be utilized throughout the movie to place importance on various aspects of the histories of the main characters and their families. Overall, Smoke Signals challenges the conventional views and stereotypes

The novel Reservation Blues, written by Sherman Alexie reveals different struggles encountered by the Native Americans on the Spokane Indian Reservation through the use of history, traditions, and values. Thomas Builds-the-Fire, a pureblood Indian, forms a band with his childhood acquaintances Victor Joseph and Junior Polatkin called Coyote Springs. Alexie uses a variety of scenes and personal encounters between characters and their dialogue to portray the meaning of tribal identity throughout the novel. A cultures goal is to prove their identity and be superior to one another; The American culture has achieved dominance through white hegemony while the Spokane American Indian tribe is in a battle of oppression struggling to preserve their tribal identity. Spokane Native Americans are very passionate about their tribal identities yet are envious of the power that the white hegemony holds against them, leading them to their depression.

In Sherman Alexie’s Smoke Signals, the central theme revolves around the idea of fire and ash coming into play relating to the main characters Thomas and Victor. At the very beginning of the film, Thomas is thrown through a window and out of a burning house where his parents ended up dying. He gets caught by a fellow Native American, Arnold, and is returned to his grandmother. The narrator then foreshadows the two children, one being the child thrown from the fire, Thomas, and the other being Arnold’s son, Victor, essentially being related to a fire, one being the actual flame while the other is the ash. Ultimately, they are nearly polar opposites, but go hand in hand with one another.

As a western civilization we are guilty of making other cultures seem strange and unrelatable by describing their culture in an exuberant way. However, Miner does an excellent job at executing the description of the “Nacirema” as foreign individuals with him being a American himself. This essay is told from an

This part of the book deeply investigates the agriculture, culture, customs, and religion of the area. This helps the reader grasp the importance of culture and how it affects the reaction of a culture during a disastrous time. “ To speak of culture is to speak of elements that help shape human behavior- the inhibitions that govern it from inside, the rules that control it from the outside, the languages and philosophies that serve to edit a people’s experience of life, the customs and rituals that help define how one person should relate to another. To speak of culture is to speak of those forces that promote uniformity of thought and action” (Erikson, 1976, p81). Understanding the culture of the settlers of the area helps to bring about better understanding of the survivors reaction to the

The chapters lend nicely to setting up Basso’s postmodernist and symbolic theoretical orientations. Highly influenced by Clifford Geertz’s symbolic approach, rooted in the ideology that culture is an organized collection of symbolic systems that transmit a deep cultural meaning for a collective group of people, Basso explains the hidden symbology of places for the Western Apache. Basso explains that place-names (1) provide context for mental images of a particular place, (2) evoke historical tales of ancestors, (3) affirm the validity of traditional moral values and ancestral knowledge, (4) and offers advice while healing wounded spirits (xiv, 100). Basso comments on the symbolic nature of Western Apache places, “named places have long been symbols of rich significance for the Apache people,” which are defined through each story attached to each of the 296 places that Basso maps

Lastly, some symbols used throughout Smoke Signals that provide further evidence that this movie supports Durkheim’s theory include fire, ash, and rebirth. During the opening scene, Thomas, who is narrating, states that some children are just “pillars of flame” that burn everything they touch or “pillars of ash” that fall apart if you touch them. Victor’s treatment as a child turned him into a “pillar of fire,” he is filled with anger. However, Victor changed from fire into ash, like a rebirth, after learning the truth about Arnold, experiencing a situation like him and the fire, and finally spreading his ashes. Whereas Thomas remained, after losing his parents in the party fire, a pillar of ash, always both sensitive and caring.

Throughout history, there have been many literary studies that focused on the culture and traditions of Native Americans. Native writers have worked painstakingly on tribal histories, and their works have made us realize that we have not learned the full story of the Native American tribes. Deborah Miranda has written a collective tribal memoir, “Bad Indians”, drawing on ancestral memory that revealed aspects of an indigenous worldview and contributed to update our understanding of the mission system, settler colonialism and histories of American Indians about how they underwent cruel violence and exploitation. Her memoir successfully addressed past grievances of colonialism and also recognized and honored indigenous knowledge and identity.

Extended essay response Jonathan Scriva Hollywood films have influenced our values and beliefs of socio-cultural groups within a film. In the context of race and gender the films Cowboys and Aliens (2011) and the searchers (1956) both share similarities. These two successful films are 55 years apart the both convey the perspectives of race and gender through the reflection of American Indians in these films. The films The Searchers and Cowboys and Aliens show that Hollywood has changed the way we see the status of Indians. In the earlier film the Indians are represented as killers and mongrels as in this current day and age we have grown to accept them and appreciate their culture.

Writer Sherman Alexie has a knack of intertwining his own problematic biographical experience with his unique stories and no more than “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” demonstrates that. Alexie laced a story about an Indian man living in Spokane who reflects back on his struggles in life from a previous relationship, alcoholism, racism and even the isolation he’s dealt with by living off the reservation. Alexie has the ability to use symbolism throughout his tale by associating the title’s infamy of two different ethnic characters and interlinking it with the narrator experience between trying to fit into a more society apart from his own cultural background. However, within the words themselves, Alexie has created themes that surround despair around his character however he illuminates on resilience and alcoholism throughout this tale.

Sherman Alexie’s Survival Equation and the Resilience of Native American Culture Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven portrays the hardships faced by Native Americans at the hands of the overpowering force of mainstream American culture. Alexie uses multiple perspectives in his book to convey the complexity of the situation on the reservation. However, his recurring themes such as survival, tradition, and underlying cultural ties connect the stories together as does the overarching message about the resilience of Native American people and their culture. With these consistent themes, the multiple perspectives found in his stories prove the validity of his cultural points due to their repetition. In his composite novel, Alexie reveals the resilience of Native American culture by breaking it down into a mathematical equation