The Lone Ranger And Krick Analysis
Identity and Individual Self
While distinct in their subject matter, the collections of stories presented in Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Edwidge Danticat’s Krick? Krack! are strikingly similar in the responses they evoke and in their ability, through detached or seemingly detached narratives, to create a sense of collective selfhood for the peoples represented in those narratives. Through connected stories, repetition of themes, and events, shifting of narrative voice and honest, unapologetic discussion of the problems and the beauty of their personal experiences, Danticat and Alexie provide frank, cohesive portrayals of a Haitian and Native American peoplehood, respectively.
While it may not be the intention …show more content…
The use of these elements is indicative of the loving imposition and inclusion of past generations into one’s own, as well as the attempt to pass down all that has gone before to those who will one day bear the burden of what that past means. Thus, Hermine’s soup is her daughter Gracina’s soup as well, not because she eats of it but because those bones-that ancestry- are a part of her and she will one day be responsible for passing them |(and it) on. Likewise, Danticat’s reader in the epilogue must know her history and her lineage, not only to know how to braid her daughter’s hair but for whom those braids are …show more content…
Both authors assert that the collective self-represented by the past is part and parcel of that embodied by the future- bound to it and inseparable. The one serves to define the other. Likewise, there is a call to make the efforts and struggles of the past worthwhile- to do better, if simply for the sake of one’s ancestors.
In Tonto, Alexie goes as far as to suggest that time is unimportant, if even existent, with respect to reality. Watches and keeping track of time are of no consequence. One’s past will always be present, and the future always ahead, so there is no need to dwell on either, but that does not mean that they do not matter. A person lives in the now, but every “now” was once the future and will become the past (22). Alexie makes extensive use of the period of five hundred years, as though that is a length of time perceptible to the human consciousness, if appreciated more by the
While distinct in their subject matter, the collections of stories presented in Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Edwidge Danticat’s Krick? Krack! are strikingly similar in the responses they evoke and in their ability, through detached or seemingly detached narratives, to create a sense of collective selfhood for the peoples represented in those narratives. Through connected stories, repetition of themes, and events, shifting of narrative voice and honest, unapologetic discussion of the problems and the beauty of their personal experiences, Danticat and Alexie provide frank, cohesive portrayals of a Haitian and Native American peoplehood, respectively.
While it may not be the intention …show more content…
The use of these elements is indicative of the loving imposition and inclusion of past generations into one’s own, as well as the attempt to pass down all that has gone before to those who will one day bear the burden of what that past means. Thus, Hermine’s soup is her daughter Gracina’s soup as well, not because she eats of it but because those bones-that ancestry- are a part of her and she will one day be responsible for passing them |(and it) on. Likewise, Danticat’s reader in the epilogue must know her history and her lineage, not only to know how to braid her daughter’s hair but for whom those braids are …show more content…
Both authors assert that the collective self-represented by the past is part and parcel of that embodied by the future- bound to it and inseparable. The one serves to define the other. Likewise, there is a call to make the efforts and struggles of the past worthwhile- to do better, if simply for the sake of one’s ancestors.
In Tonto, Alexie goes as far as to suggest that time is unimportant, if even existent, with respect to reality. Watches and keeping track of time are of no consequence. One’s past will always be present, and the future always ahead, so there is no need to dwell on either, but that does not mean that they do not matter. A person lives in the now, but every “now” was once the future and will become the past (22). Alexie makes extensive use of the period of five hundred years, as though that is a length of time perceptible to the human consciousness, if appreciated more by the