...Larry Johnican Professor Carter English 100 B07 January 24, 2014 The Little Indian In the essay “Superman and Me” Sherman Alexie discusses his life as young Indian boy growing up in Eastern Washington State. Sherman Alexie describes how his father created a love for books to him; when he says “My father loved books, and since I loved my with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well.” Alexie explains why the comic Superman has turned him into the great writer he is. Alexie’s family was of the middle-class by reservation standards. His loved his father “with an aching devotion” and he played a very important role in his life. Alexie’s father was the reasons he started reading books. “My father loved books, and since I loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well. Alexie thinks of a paragraph as “a fence that held words.” He compares his reservation as “a small paragraph within the United States.” He is comparing his reservation to words and comparing the United States to the “fence” or a paragraph. Some ways Alexie’s education is positive to him is that it paved a way for him to escape from poverty and to branch out and have other more opportunities in life. He gains a lot of motivation to escape poverty and to become educated. Some ways Alexie’s education was negative to him is that he constantly was bullied and feared by his classmates because Indians were not expected to be smart. He lost associates because of this fear from...
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...“The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” How does this Sherman Alexie essay compare to the Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X essays we read earlier in the semester? What implications does Alexie invoke with his use of the Superman imagery? In comparing the three essays, “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie, to “Learning to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass and “Learning to Read” by Malcolm X, one immediately recognizes that all three authors place high importance on the value of reading and writing. When one has the ability to read and write, one has the ability to achieve many goals. One also has the ability to make a difference in the lives of others and society. In “Learning to Read” by Frederick...
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...In his short autobiographical essay “Superman and Me,” Sherman Alexie uses powerful sentences, visualization, and repetition to create a well-written vivid story. Alexie addresses his own childhood experiences with education. He was a young boy that lived in poverty on an Indian reservation where Indians were derided for being educated. He states that “Indian children were expected to fail in the non-Indian world” (Alexie 584). His parents would be considered poor in most western standards, but to reservation standards they were a middle-class family. Even with the odds of expectation and poverty against him, Alexie describes how he escaped these circumstances by teaching himself how to read. This ambition for success derived from his father who had a passion for reading. Because of his love and dedication to his father, he decided to have the same passion. Before he could read words he was able to review his father’s books and distinguish what a paragraph was. This initiated his path to success by comparing everything in his life to a paragraph “a paragraph was a fence that...
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...The essay, “Superman and Me,”by Sherman Alexie, is a story explaining how a young Indian child teaches himself how to read refusing to follow customary Indian traditions. The purpose of this essay was to make an example for people back home, mainly Indian kids living on resverations. Alexie was motivated, loved to read books because of his father, if it wasn’t for his father, Alexie would have not be successful. Alexie’s family was poor, he had 4 siblings.his father worked on and off, eventhough he began to buy books and bring them home to read everyday.it was untradtional for his dad to want to read and go to catholic school”My father loved books, and since I loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well”(89)....
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