Tiffany Klein

April 30, 2004

Humor in Native American Literature

            When asked about the characteristics of Native Americans, many will stereotype them as stoic and humorless, believing their serious attitudes are the result of five hundred years of mistreatment by the dominant society.  However, many contemporary, Native American authors disprove this assumption by portraying their culture as resilient by using humor.  American Indian literature utilizes humor for the creation of identity, as a mechanism for coping and survival, and to raise awareness among non-Indians.  Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, and Zitkala-Sha portray humor for these purposes through their writing styles and characterization.

            Humor functions as a coping mechanism in the way that it allows one to adapt to difficult material.  Freud claims, “Humor [is] a higher-order defensive mechanism designed to protect the individual from painful affect[s]” (Ferguson, 4894).  Alexie exhibits this form of humor in “The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor.”  When Jimmy finds out he has cancer, he jokingly tells his wife, Norma, that his favorite tumor is baseball shaped, complete with stitch marks.  He asks her to call him Babe Ruth and tells her that he plans to sit at the Hall of Fame with his X-rays strapped to his chest to prove his loyalty as a fan.  Because of his insincerity, Norma leaves him.  His cousin, Simon, agrees and tells him, “You’re an asshole, little Jimmy Zero-Horses” (157).  Jimmy uses humor to cope with his cancer and the fear of dying; although, it seems unnatural to use sarcasm to explain something so serious (Coulombe, 96). 

To create Jimmy’s sense of humor, Alexie incorporates satire; “a literary genre that uses irony, wit, and sometimes sarcasm to expose humanity’s vices and foibles […] [and] essentially has a moral purpose” (Murfin, 426).  Most of Alexie’s writing utilizes satire to make his points; however, other Native American authors, like Zitkala-Sha, do not include satire in order to demonstrate humor.  Through characterization, Zitkala-Sha displays humor as a form of coping in American Indian Stories.  Because the stories are based on her experiences while growing up on a reservation and within an Indian boarding school, we sympathize with her character and understand the emotional complexities because we realize they are real and therefore, are more capable of understanding the presence of humor though subtle.  During her experiences at the boarding school, she is taught Christianity and the horrors of evil.  After seeing a horrific representation of Satan for the first time, she is frightened and has nightmares.  To confront her fear, she finds a picture of the Devil in the Bible and begins to scratch over his eyes with a pencil until she makes holes in the paper (64).  This image of a young, Zitkala-Sha secretly destroying the white man’s devil is humorous.  It is her way of coping with the ideals of Western religion and its intrusion into her own faith.

Humor exists for survival purposes in Native American literature.  Instead of succumbing to the destruction of their culture, they choose to survive through humor to prove that they are “resilient [and] actively working to adapt [to] their environment and themselves in a dynamic society” (Ferguson, 4893).  In “Approximate…Tumor”, Jimmy’s use of comedy not only helps him to cope with cancer but also enables him to “survive and even triumph over debilitating circumstances” (Coulcombe, 97).  Jimmy admits that laughter saved him and Norma from pain and cleansed their wounds (Alexie, 164).  He becomes resilient by adapting to his disease through his jokes.   

Like Alexie, Louise Erdrich also uses satire to present survival through humor.  In her short story, “Saint Marie,” Leopolda tests Marie’s faith by pouring boiling water over her and then later, when Marie fights back, Leopolda stabs her vengefully.  Marie survives these trials and shows resiliency by her transformation into a saint through her stigmata wounds, which are created by Leopolda’s stabbing.  While all the other nuns pray to Marie, the guilty Leopolda is forced to show reverence to someone of lower status (3097-99).  Marie not only survives the ordeal but gains revenge in her creation as saint (Gleason, 65).  Erdrich creates humor through Marie’s portrayal of a saint.  She plays the role full heartily and even gives her blessing to the nuns by waving her bloody hand with a serious, “Peace be with you” (3098).  Marie’s survival from Leopolda’s abuse not only represents her own resiliency but the resiliency of Native Americans to the intrusion of Christianity.  By keeping the faith and traditions of their own culture, Indians have survived the conversion of Christianity.  Erdrich’s display of sarcasm through Marie’s sainthood seems to be a slap in the face towards Western culture.  

              The use of a trickster figure in Native American literature also denotes survival through humor.  According to Schimmoeller, the coyote is the most widely used symbol of a trickster because he is a “survivor-wild and precocious-and is associated with humor because in his adventuring he transgresses the natural limits of his world” (4145).  The trickster is able to transform his or herself and not only perform as a jokester but as the creator of chaos.  In American Indian Stories, Zitkala-Sha portrays the trickster figure through Blue-Star Woman’s nephews.  They come to Blue-Star offering to help gain her land back by deceiving the government and creating false proof of the lineage of her ancestry (165-70).  They explain, “In just the same way, we fight crooks with crooks.  We have clever white lawyers working with us” (169).  As Blue-Star agrees to give them half of her land if they succeed, she realizes that “in her dire need she had become involved with tricksters” (170).  Her nephews create chaos as they come in out of nowhere offering to help just when she was beginning to accept her poor situation.  The fact that they want half of her land is very tricky, especially when you would expect family to offer free aid.  They are tricksters in the way they are able to deceive and travel between the Indian and dominant culture; however, they offer a chance for survival to Blue-Star.  Similarly, Erdrich displays the trickster figure through her character, Marie in “Saint Marie.”  Marie displays trickster qualities as she mischievously tries to kick Leopolda into the oven (Gleason, 60).

            Alexie presents the trickster in the traditional form as the coyote in “A Train Is an Order of Occurrence Designed to Lead to Some Result.”  He portrays the coyote as the creator who accidentally forms white people when he drops his toenail clippings from heaven (134-35).  In this origin story, the coyote creates chaos for the Indians by introducing the dominant culture, which eventually destroys some of the Native American’s way of life.  Alexie humorously uses sarcasm to describe the white society as an accident that was created by the toenails from a canine.  Stephen Evans describes Alexie himself as the “trickster figure telling stories” (47).  Alexie creates uneasiness for readers because he does not always offer an easy answer as in “A Drug Called Tradition.”  Thomas celebrates because he has received money from the government so that they may put power lines on his land.  He says, “When Indians make lots of money from corporations that way, we can hear our ancestors laughing in the trees.  But we never can tell whether they’re laughing at the Indians or the whites” (12-13).  We are unsure if Thomas is in a good situation because on one hand, even though he now has money, he has given up ancestral land for the use of the dominant society.  Joseph Coulombe comments on the uneasiness the readers feel from this situation.  He says, “Like the trickster figure, Alexie rarely offers an easy moral-to-the-story; the questions he raises—and the world he depicts—have few simple answers” (95).  He believes that because we are not given the answer, we are forced to evaluate the circumstances ourselves and learn from the experience. 

            Humor creates social awareness among readers.  According to Coulombe, “Laughter might discomfort and confuse us, but it also prompts rethinking, growth, and change” (103).  Both Alexie and Erdrich use satire to raise awareness of the struggles among Native Americans both on and off reservations.  Philip Heldrich refers to this form of comedy as Black Humor because irony and sarcasm is used to portray the debilitating effects of the dominant society on minorities.  Black Humor conveys the chaos and feeling of loss among Native Americans (47). 

Heldrich believes that Alexie wants readers to “recognize how the dominant culture has eroded, stereotyped, and even erased culturally specific rituals and traditions” (48).  Humor is the only way of showing the absurdity of reservation life.  In “Amusements,” Alexie confronts Indian stereotypes and racism when Victor and Sadie put their drunken friend, Dirty Joe, on the roller coaster.  White spectators gather around and laugh at the intoxicated Indian.  After a few moments of hysterical laughter, Victor and Sadie realize that they have contributed to the dominant culture’s stereotype of Native Americans.  They quickly run away and leave poor Joe alone as the carnival attraction (54-58).  Victor feels guilty for his betrayal as “the Indian who offered up another Indian like some treaty” (58).  Coulombe believes Victor’s prank is the result of the fear and frustration from living within a society stereotyped by the dominant culture (98).   

            In “Somebody Kept Saying Powwow,” Alexie humorously portrays the seriousness of alcoholism and its detrimental effects on the reservation.  Alcohol not only destroys the lives of family and friends, but it also ruins the traditions and culture of the Native Americans.  In the story, Victor is already drunk by the time he reaches the bar and continually asks, “Where’s the powwow?” (203-04).  Because everyone is too busy drinking, they have no use for their traditions; so, their old ways eventually die.  Alexie’s referral to Alcoholics Anonymous portrays the characters’ way of coping “with an alien, bicultural reservation environment” (Evans, 53).  In “Somebody…Powwow,” Alexie mentions how almost everyone spends time in A.A. and uses their routine in social gatherings.  Junior explains the routine:

“Hi, my name is Junior,” I usually say when I walk into a bar or party where Indians have congregated.

“Hi, Junior,” all the others shout in an ironic unison.

A few of the really smart-asses about the whole A.A. thing carry around little medals indicating how long they’ve been continuously drunk (204).

The characters do not take A.A. seriously perhaps because they feel there is nothing better to do on the reservation than drink, or because they feel awkward seeking help from an organization created by the dominant society to cure them from something that the dominant culture introduced to them in the first place.  Alexie’s example of A.A. as a social function shows how serious alcoholism is on the reservation. 

            Similarly, Louise Erdrich draws on Black Humor to portray the chaos invented by contemporary culture.  In her poem, “Dear John Wayne,” several Indians watch a John Wayne movie at a drive-in.  She sarcastically displays Wayne’s character as larger than life.  His face “pitted / like the land that was once flesh.  Each rut, / each scar makes a promise: It is / not over, this fight, not as long as you resist. / Everything we see belongs to us” (55).  The American Indians laugh at the movie’s idea that everything belongs to the dominant culture.  They return into their selves after the movie ends because they know the truth; Hollywood portrays the white man’s belief that Native Americans are barriers to progress and should be removed (54-55).  By their reaction and acknowledgement of Hollywood’s false portrayal, they seem to resist assimilation.  Contemporary culture creates chaos for Native Americans by creating false visions and hope.  Only through imagination and humor can they survive this corruption (Heldrich, 54).

            In contrast to Alexie and Erdrich’s use of Black Humor, Zitkala-Sha uses characterization to portray the dominant society’s cruel and disheartening treatment towards American Indians through her emotional experiences.  During an orator competition, she experienced “a strong prejudice against [her] people” (78).  The opposing team waved a flag depicting an Indian girl with the word, “squaw;” however, she experienced victory over her enemies as she won first place.  She explains, “The evil spirit laughed within me when the white flag dropped out of sight, and the hands which hurled it hung limp in defeat” (79-80).  Like Alexie, Zitkala-Sha presents dominant society’s racist and stereotypical views of Native Americans.  Though she does not do this with humor, we still feel discomfort from the realization of her mistreatment.  She successfully creates social awareness.  

              Humor, including Black Humor, creates a sense of identity and community among American Indians.  Alexie uses humor to “bring the tribe back together, renewing a sense of custom, ritual, and community” (Heldrich, 54).  To replace the loss of their ancient traditions, Alexie comically illustrates how the Native Americans have created new rituals and customs with present day activities such as basketball.  In “The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn’t Flash Red Anymore,” Victor and Adrian create oral traditions by telling stories of their local basketball legends.  Victor contemplates, “A reservation hero is a hero forever.  In fact, their status grows over the years as the stories are told and retold” (Alexie, 48).  The basketball heroes are viewed as redeemers by the way they bring the reservation together and create resilience, “pride, and Indian identity” (Heldrich, 55).

            Humor also functions to unite people from every race and class (Coulombe, 102).  In “Witnesses, Secret and Not,” the young Indian boy and his father are being questioned by the white detective who seems intimidating at first until the boy finds the way the detective pokes his tongue out as he writes as humorous.  The boy begins to laugh.  The detective and his father question his laughter and “soon all three of [them] were laughing, at mostly nothing.  Maybe [they] were all nervous or bored.  Or both” (Alexie, 221).  Despite their racial differences, they find a way to connect over laughter, which is universal.

            The three, Native American writers, Sherman Alexie, Zitkala-Sha, and Louise Erdrich, prove that humor does exist within their culture and traditions.  Humor is essential in the way that it allows American Indians to cope with the partial loss of their traditional way of life, helping them to survive the hardships created by the dominant society.  Humor connects them to one another and creates empathy among the dominant culture.  Most importantly, from humor comes strength and resiliency, which allows the Native Americans to adapt to their situation and resist succumbing to despair.

Works Cited

            Alexie, Sherman.  The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.  New York:  HarperPerennial,  1994.

Coulombe, Joseph L.  “The Approximate Size of His Favorite Humor.”  American Indian Quarterly  Winter 2002: 94-116.  Available from Academic Search Premier [database on-line].  EBSCOhost.  Accessed 7 April 2004.  <http://www.nola.cl.edu/databases/>.

Erdrich, Louise.  “Dear John Wayne.”  Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry.  Ed. Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan.  New York:  Penguin Books,  1994.  54-55. 

Erdrich, Louise.  “Saint Marie.”  The Heath Anthology of American Literature.  4^th ed.  Ed. Paul Lauter. New York:  Houghton Mifflin Co,  2002.  3090-99. 

Evans, Stephen F.  “Open Containers: Sherman Alexie’s Drunken Indians.”  American Indian Quarterly  Winter 2001: 46-73.  Available from Academic Search Premier [database on-line].  EBSCOhost.  Accessed 8 April 2004.  <http://www.nola.cl.edu/databases/>.

            Ferguson, Laurie L.  “Trickster Shows the Way: Humor, Resiliency, and Growth in Modern Native American Literature (Sherman Alexie, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich).”  Diss.  The Wright Institute,  2002:  4880-5023.  Available from MLA International Library [database on-line].  EBSCOhost.  Accessed 7 April 2004.  <http://www.nola.cl.edu/databases/>.

Gleason, William.  “Her Laugh an Ace: The Function of Humor in Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine.”  American Indian Culture and Research Journal  11.3 (1987):  51-73.  Available from MLA International Library [database on-line].  EBSCOhost.  Accessed 7 April 2004.  <http://www.nola.cl.edu/databases/>.

            Heldrich, Philip.  “Black Humor and the New Ethnic Writing of Tony Diaz and Sherman Alexie.”  Pennsylvania English  23.1-2 (2001):  47-58.  Available from MLA International Library [database on-line].  EBSCOhost.  Accessed 7 April 2004.  <http://www.nola.cl.edu/databases/>.

Murfin, Ross.  The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms.  2^nd ed.  New York: Bedford / St. Martin’s,  2003.  426-27.

Schimmoeller, Katrina Kathleen.  “Humor in the House: Wendell Berry, Rachel Carson, Edward Abbey, and Louise Erdrich.”  Diss.  Univ of California-Davis, 1998:  4145.  Available from MLA International Library [database on-line].  EBSCOhost.  Accessed 7 April 2004.  <http://www.nola.cl.edu/databases/>.

            Zitkala-Sha.  American Indian Stories.  Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985.