Naomi Johnston

November 26, 2001

Loss and Survival in Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Sherman Alexie begins The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven with a metaphor of a hurricane and the solemn reality of a drunken brawl. He describes Victor and the reservation partiers as passive observers, outside of the events. He writes, "Standing at his window, watching his uncles grow bloody and tired," Victor watched as they fought, ". . .nobody moved to change the situation. Witnesses. They were all witnesses and nothing more" (3). In another section, Alexie again describes Victor quietly observing events outside of his control:

Alexie expresses the ambiguities of the relationship between the dominant and traditional cultures when he writes, on the reservation, "the STOP signs are just suggestions" (52). The characters’ struggle between assimilation and resistance in Lone Ranger is illustrative of such ambiguities. They find forgiveness in pain. They find survival in loss. In spite of these struggles in Lone Ranger, however, Alexie describes his writing as being ". . .somehow just about decency" (Poets and Writers, Jan/Feb 1999: 54-59). This paper examines the role that forgiveness plays in creating decency and survival amidst the experiences of loss found in Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. This paper also examines those layers of decency and history used by Alexie to present a non-stereotypical examination of being a reservation Indian in modern America.

"It’s hard to be optimistic on the reservation," writes Alexie. "When a glass sits on a table here, people don’t wonder if it’s half filled or half empty. They just hope it’s good beer. Still, Indians have a way of surviving" (49). On their journey in, "This is What it Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona," Victor and Thomas-Builds-the-Fire find survival at the end of a winding road. This story "may be revelatory for a lot of people, regardless of race" writes Bob Irvy, in "From the Reservation of His Mind". "Victor travels to Arizona, where he must confront his anger and eventually forgive his father," Arnold Joseph, an alcoholic who abandoned Victor and his mom when Victor was a child (Irvy).

Their journey is one that begins with loss. Victor loses his job at the BIA and he loses his father (Arnold) to "a heart attack" (59). Although Arnold had left many years ago, writes Alexie, "there still was a genetic pain, which was soon to be a pain as real and immediate as a broken bone" (59). Victor and Thomas’s travel to Arizona metaphorically retraces the forced journey of displaced American Indians’ travel across the land and onto reservations many years ago. The boys literally break with tradition when they leave the reservation, their families, and their homes. In their travels, they face the historical loss of their Native American heritage, and they come to terms with the modern world and reservation life.

On this journey, like their Indian ancestors, Victor and Thomas encounter Indians of other tribes as well as hostile outsiders (Whites)—this is especially evident in the movie Smoke Signals, when Victor and Thomas lose their seats on the bus to two rednecks who refer to the boys as "Injuns" and force them to the back of the bus. Through language, the boys act defiantly. They use the rhythm of an Indian chant to mock John Wayne, a Hollywood American Cowboy, whose movies portrayed Indians as savages. In Phoenix, Arizona, Victor forgives his father for everything—for staying too long and leaving too soon. Thomas, in turn, forgives Victor for abusing him when they were kids. Through acts of forgiveness and defiance, Victor and Thomas diminish the pains of loss. They survive.

Survival even exists through loss on the reservation in Lone Ranger. "In the outside world, a person can be a hero one second and a nobody the next . . .A reservation hero is a hero forever. In fact, their status grows over the years as the stories are told and retold" (48). These heroes exist in traditional oral stories. The irony found in Thomas’s character, is that he is a traditional Indian "storyteller that nobody wanted to listen to" (61). His visions and wisdom, however, counters Victor’s pain and loss and exemplifies how Alexie links tradition and abstract ideas of survival to actual events that occur on and off the reservation in Spokane.

Sometimes survival originates from a gesture of kindness, a decent action. Thomas-Builds-a-Fire found it in the friendship offered him, by Victor’s father (who found Thomas awaiting a vision at Spokane falls, and fed his hunger for a mystical sign with a meal at a local Denny’s restaurant and a ride home). Of this experience, Thomas tells Victor that through decency, one can survive. "Take care of each other," he says (69).

As a child, Victor found survival through forgiveness. He "didn’t hate the fear and pain that caused" his tears, writes Alexie. "He expected that" (9). He hated tears, because they exposed his inner sorrows. He "cried until he found his parents, alone, passed out on their bed in the back bedroom. Victor climbed up on the bed and lay down between them" (9). As Victor literally lay in-between the cause of his pain, his drunken parents whose stench and sweat choke him and whose actions cause his tears, Victor shows forgiveness—he kisses them. As he lay down in forgiveness with his pain, the hurricane dwindled. Forgiveness helps characters "transcend pain, anger and loss" in Lone Ranger ("Official Sherman Alexie Biography: Books." 1).

In, "The Trial of Thomas Builds-The-Fire," while on the witness stand Thomas finds courage in his visions of survival. "The Indians in the courtroom wept and wanted to admit defeat," writes Alexie (97). But Thomas "closed his eyes and continued the story" he says, "I was not going to submit without a struggle . . .At first I was passive. . .But I suddenly rose up. . . They could not break me" he says, I refused to admit defeat. When Thomas’ story was finished, the Indians were no longer broken, but sitting upright and smiling "with Indian abandon" (98). Even as Thomas is bussed to Walla Walla State Penitentiary to serve a life sentence, he finds courage in his stories and visions.

In, "Jesus Christ’s Half-Brother is Alive and well on the Spokane Indian Reservation," Alexie uses the voicelessness of a small orphaned boy as a metaphor of American Indians. He writes, "James must know how to cry because he hasn’t yet and I know he’s waiting for that one moment to cry like it was five hundred years of tears" (115). James, however, defies the myth of the "vanishing Indian," because he has dreams of survival, "worn clean into his ribcage" (115). James patience toward gaining voice is much like the buffalo dreams of a return to Native America where Indians survive and recapture history and their stolen land.

"When all is said and done" writes John LaRoe, "‘everything is a matter of perception’ (1)." This philosophy is evidenced when James finally gains voice. He says, "The earth is an oval marble that nobody can win . . . [and] . . . the sky is not blue and the grass is not green . . . everything is a matter of perception" (128). James is the voice of resistance, and calls into question the technology associated with the dominant culture of White America. He says, "the earth is our grandmother and that technology has become our mother and that they both hate each other" (129). To James, finding a balance in the "minority dilemma" is, and will always be, painful.

Loss and Survival frames the events in Sherman Alexie’s, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Through forgiveness and defiance, characters overcome their emotional wounds and survive amidst an array of loss. As a child, Victor forgives his parents drunken neglect. As a young man, he forgives his father’s absenteeism. Only through benevolence, does he overcome deep-rooted anger and survive. Survival is also found in resistance, such as when Thomas finds courage in his visions of resistance as a wild horse that cannot be tamed ("The Trial of Thomas Builds-The-Fire"). This resistance is also seen in the defiance of James, an orphaned boy who overcomes voicelessness and argues against assimilation ("Jesus Christ’s Half-Brother is Alive and well on the Spokane Indian Reservation").