34 pages • 1 hour read
Sherman AlexieA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Throughout the novel, history plays a large role in shaping the events of the present, especially when this history is violent or traumatic. The characters are influenced by their own pasts, their family backgrounds, and important historical events. The past can appear in dreams, memories, or even physically.
For characters like Big Mom, with an unusually long lifespan usual lifespan, this effect is intensified, since they were actually present for events long past. Big Mom continues to remember and relive the moment when the US Army slaughtered Indian horses. It is this memory that encourages her to continue teaching music and attempting to help her people. Robert Johnson, when asked by the devil what he values most, thinks to his ancestors’ enslavement and answers that freedom is the most important thing to him. Although he did not experience slavery firsthand, its presence in his people’s history directly shapes his values and choices. Other characters feel the effects of the past in a more everyday manner, for example, by struggling with the hereditary nature of alcoholism. With the characters of Sheridan and Wright, however, the past interacts with the present in a very literal way.
By Sherman Alexie
Flight: A Novel
Sherman Alexie
Indian Killer
Sherman Alexie
On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City
Sherman Alexie
Reservation Love Song
Sherman Alexie
Ten Little Indians
Sherman Alexie
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Sherman Alexie
The Facebook Sonnet
Sherman Alexie
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Sherman Alexie
The Toughest Indian in the World
Sherman Alexie
This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona
Sherman Alexie
War Dances
Sherman Alexie
What You Pawn I Will Redeem
Sherman Alexie