"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself.” (Harvey Fierstein) In the writing This is What it Means to say Phoenix, Arizona, there seems to be an identity crisis that is widespread throughout the tribe. The tribe as a whole seems to feel the loss of the warriors nature that used to come so strongly to them. Meanwhile, Thomas wants to be free of his place of the story teller. And Victor was the one who grew up confused.
In the first place, the tribe has changed. On the reservation "there were these two Indian boys who wanted to be warriors. But it was too late to be warriors in the old way... So the two Indian boys stole a car and drove to the city, [and] they parked the stolen car in the front of the police station... When they got back, all their friends cheered and their parents’ eyes shone with pride. ‘You were very brave,’ everybody said" (Alexie). The Indian boys wanted their lives to mean something. They wanted to fight the power of the people who came into their land and took everything from them and their ancestors, the ones who made it so their lives on the …show more content…
The life he was handed affected him more than he expected, “When they were fifteen and had long since stopped being friends, Victor and Thomas got into a fistfight. That is, Victor was really drunk and beat Thomas up for no reason at all..” (Alexie). He had pent up aggression and in adolescence, there is a huge need for acceptance. Thomas was someone who everyone tried to ignore, he accepted his role as the storyteller while others thought he was crazy. Being drunk having impaired Victor’s judgment, Thomas seemed like the best person to push down so he could improve his social standings. He turned into someone later in life he did not seem to recognize. Victor told Thomas that he thought too much, only to find be the one to think to much later in