Todays modern age is apprehensive only with facts, yet facts can be a double edged sword when it comes to the human person. For people seem to be only interested in the biography of an artist rather than the statement he or she has contributed to the literary world. Sherman Joseph Alexie, notes this idea in an interview with Mr.Moyers when being prompted about developing great work. For in his words, “truly great work comes from an artist who is in a manic and or depressed state of being” (Sherman Alexie). This is where Alexie sees himself creating his best works because a surge of emotions rises up and write themselves out in his clinically diagnosed manic depression. Through his works, he “challenges and explodes” the common ideology of Native …show more content…
The odds of performing a successful hydrocephalic surgery on an infant are very slim odds, but despite the odds, Alexie’s surgery was a success. While being granted to live, his head was enlarged from the condition and was teased by other students, being nicknamed the “globe.” To which, Alexie also suffered seizures and had numerous bed wettings until the age of seven from his condition. Although, this did not stop him from prospering. Alexie spent every day reading until 8th grade. He would read whatever was lying around, if it be a car manual or cereal box, he read it and applied the ideology of writing to his life. By reading this excessive amount, he prospered on, and Alexie then decided to attend the Reardan High School, located twenty miles outside the Spokane reservation, which is a big move for all Native Americans who spent the entirety of their lives on the …show more content…
Yet, the work he has given back to the world is beginning a new cultural movement for all Native Americans, which resembles his true identity. His work, The Business of Fancydancing and First Indian on the Moon, employ the use of irony and sardonic techniques to show how alcoholism and poverty is simply a fact of all Native American livelihoods. Readers experience sadness of alcoholism and despair of poverty in the Native American protagonist, yet the author also employs the sense of respect and compassion for those characters in a helpless situation. The readers are then left with a mix of emotions from the piece, and begin to review their own societal ideology. It can be said that, “fiction, if it’s any good, should persuade you of individual and inner lives” (Poetry Foundation, 1), because Alexie takes Native American men and women and unmask their complexities, making them as complex as everyone else in literature. His poetry may seem small in comparison to other poets, but through the use of timed ironic humor and sardonic voice, readers are grasped into the poem and feel as if they live in the abyss of alcoholism and poverty with the individuals described. Nevertheless, Alexie implicitly conjures his work to answer three questions about native American livelihood, and this ultimately creates the coherent message in each piece of literature, and from there exposes social injustices