As I need some time to flush out some current post I'm working on, I thought this would be a good time to share an essay I wrote last summer about Alexie's story, "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.” What I'd really appreciate is feedback, especially by Natives. Please post your thoughts and experiences, whether you agree with my observations or not.
In a recent class in my MFA program, I was assigned to write an essay on Sherman Alexie’s “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,” and decided to write off the following question developed by my professor:
Some critics would refer to Alexie's and other contemporary writers' fiction as "committed" fiction--that is, fiction with a clear political point of view and set of political arguments, often satirical. Committed fiction, they argue, makes its political arguments organic to the narratives they tell but they are not "didactic"--that is, intended to teach as moral instruction in a patronizing way. Is Alexie's story didactic or "committed"? What implicit political arguments is the narrator making? How are they organic to the narrative? Or are they simply heavy-handed?
I say “write off,” because, based on the information given in the prompt, I’m not sure either term quite works, and so I’ll have to modify the prompt, as I use it. At first glance, it seems “Committed” would probably work: any politics in this story are “organic to the narrative” and are not meant to “teach…moral instruction in a patronizing way.” And yet, the term and its definition feel wrong to me. To explain my reaction, I must first explain that I’m married into a Navajo family and have lived and taught on the Navajo Nation for eight years. (As I write this, my wife’s family is sponsoring a family reunion. However, if I let them know my intentions, they’ll say, “Always the bilagaana (white-man) trying to steal our culture; always the bilagaana trying to teach something.” They’ll be joking and deadly serious at the same time and there will be no way to separate the joke from the non-joke, because in Navajo culture the joke and non-joke are fused—the sarcasm is there, but it is not meant to sting or change anything, it just is.) Navajo obviously is a complete separate culture and language than Alexie’s, an oversight often made by whites, who treat Native Americans as if they came from one single, united culture, even though each tribe has its own language and religious beliefs, many of which clash. However, there is a common Native culture and humor that is shared among the tribes, which is either intrinsic to all Native Americans, or has developed through the long history of white-imposed Indian Schools and the more recent inter-tribal Powwow circuit. It is, I believe, this larger contemporary Native American culture Alexie is writing about, and this larger Native American audience Alexie is writing to, not Anglo-Americans. It is a mistake to believe this story was tailored for our sensibilities in any way.
Which is why, ultimately, as useful as the prompt is, it fails. As I will show, it imposes Anglo-American thinking on a Native American narrative structure. It assumes an Anglo-American purpose for story telling, which Native Americans do not share. Anglos, as I’m doing here, write primarily to persuade. Rhetoric is just a part of who we are. To make a point, to be slightly combative, to outwit, outsmart, debate, is just who we are, and we assume that is universally true of all cultures, and it’s not. From what I’ve observed, “out-smarting” is definitely part of Navajo culture, but it’s in jest, and unlike in white-culture, it is not the primary purpose of language. We use language to try to change the world to how we want it; Native Americans use language to share the world as it already exists. There is no political agenda. The point of the story is the story itself, as evidenced by an interview with the Acoma Indian poet, Simon J. Ortiz:
Why do you write? Who do you write for?
Because Indians always tell a story. The only way to continue is to tell a story and that’s what Coyote says. The only way to continue is to tell a story and there is no other way. Your children will not survive unless you tell something about them—how they were born, how they came to this certain place, how they continued.
Who do you write for besides yourself?
For my children, for my wife, for my mother and my father and my grandparents and then reverse order that way so that I may have a good journey on my way back home.
This short excerpt models Native American thinking and communication in several important ways. First, it uses repetition, by fours, as its primary structure. First Ortiz says he writes, “to tell a story.” Then he says, “the only way to continue is to tell a story and that’s what Coyote says.” Next he says “the only way to continue is to tell a story and there is no other way.” Finally, he says, “Your children will not survive unless you tell something about them—how they were born, how they came to this certain place, how they continued.” He repeats, and then adds, deepening the meaning, each time he repeats, until the fourth time, when the “ah-ha” moment is allowed to shine through in all its glory. It’s significant that this comes from an interview. Ortiz did not compose it this way for an effect; it’s just how he organically thinks and communicates. Native American students in public schools, and I presume college as well, often have their writing marked down for being redundant because Anglo-writing is thesis-driven, whereas Native American communication is experience-driven. In white society, you state your theses, and then back it up with evidence. In Native American societies, you share your experience and discover the truth through the narrative journey. An Indian will not tell you what you need to know; they will only share with you what they learned along the way, which completely obliterates political discourse as we understand it. Politics at the Chapter House do not proceed as they do in Washington, even if the outcomes are similar.
This is the same basic narrative structure for Alexie’s “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.” Because I’m Anglo, after I finished the story, I initially thought, “Where was the fistfight?,” which of the characters are the Lone Ranger? (Tonto was obvious enough even for me), and “Where is heaven in the story?” The title seemed random, and the events seemed unrelated: 1) a mock confrontation with a white 7-11 clerk; 2) a break-up with a white girlfriend, 3) a basketball game with the white son of the Bureau of Indian Affairs chief; and 4) looking for a job in the white-man’s world.
But, the title is not random—it is the essential experience the story shares: how “The Lone Ranger” (whites) and Tonto (the narrator) battle it out. However, there is another important part of the title, which is “Heaven.” As there is absolutely no reference to an after-life in the story, and all the details are clearly of this world—7-11, driving around Seattle to avoid his girlfriend, playing basketball, looking through want-ads—one can only assume “heaven” is this life.
That was my experience living on the Rez. I was treated as the enemy, but a friendly enemy, like an opponent in a game of Rez-ball, which is both serious and not serious at the same time. There was a keen awareness of what my people had done to the Navajo people, a distrust that anything had fundamentally changed (in other words, my being there and teaching their children was still eroding the traditional culture as the presence of whites always has done), but a bond still existed, in the bigger bother-hood of life, that was larger than the tribal warfare between whites and Navajos. Native Americans, unlike whites, have no need to hate their enemies, nor convert them. Tease them, yes. Laugh at them, yes. But hate, or wish to alter their basic nature, no. And, whether we like it or not, no need to forgive us either, because, first what we’ve done is so profoundly awful it is beyond forgiveness, and second, as Native Americans are culturally inward looking, rather than outward looking, we are not important enough to forgive. We are not “the people.” Native Americans believe they continued just fine before us, fine with us, and will continue just fine without us, if that day shall ever come.
My initial trouble at fully understanding the text arose from the fact that despite being married into a Navajo family, despite having lived and taught on the Navajo reservation for eight years, I am still primarily a white-thinker. After reading Ortiz again, thinking about story telling in my classroom, thinking about story telling in my wife’s family, it became obvious. This story is not about seemingly unrelated events--a mock confrontation with a white 7-11 clerk, a break-up with a white girlfriend, a basketball game with the white son of the Bureau of Indian Affairs chief, or about looking for a job in the white-man’s world—all used as details to frame a larger story about more global historical issues. It’s not political at all.
This brings us to the second important point about Native American narrative structure as evidenced in the Ortiz quote: Your children will not survive unless you tell something about them—how they were born, how they came to this certain place, how they continued. Native American narrative overall is designed for the good of the tribe, the clan, the family, not some external audience. As a white, you are more than welcome to sit in the circle and listen to the story being told, but the story telling is not for you, it is for the Natives. Alexie’s “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” is not written for us; even though we are free to enjoy it—it is written for Alexie’s people and other Native Americans who share a united experience and immediately get how the title and the four retellings of what it is like to be an Indian in white society are all different versions of the same experience. It is meant as bitter humor—ain’t that just how it feels bro, when you’re in a 7-ll late at night, and it’s just assumed you’re there to steal? This is not explaining, this is not converting, this is not making political statements. It’s shit, this is how it feels, ain’t it? And then big, rolling laughter after because it hurts too damn much to cry. No fault. No demon. Just is.
The only way to continue is to tell a story and that’s what Coyote says: this is what it was like when Kit Carson and his Calvary rode through the Chinle Valley and burned our crops and homes, and chased your great- grandparents up into Canyon de Chelly and the only reason you’re here alive is because your grandmother as a baby was taken and hidden in a juniper tree and somehow survived a couple of days without food or water until her parents could come back to get her. The only way to continue is to tell a story and there is no other way. And this is what it’s like to go to boarding school and not be able to see your family or speak your language or eat your food or practice your religion. Your children will not survive unless you tell something about them. This is what it’s like to be “Too hot to sleep” and “walk to the Third Avenue 7-11 for a Creamsicle and the company of a graveyard-shift cashier” (Alexie, 15) in a city that is built on your land but is built in the image of your enemy—to be alive in a country that attempted to annihilate your people and now wants forgiveness; this is how [you] were born, how [you] came to this certain place, how [you] continued:
“Disembodied, I could never see everything that was happening. Whites killing Indians and Indians killing whites…Three mounted soldiers played polo with a dead Indian woman’s head… Even more terrifying, though, is the fact those kinds of things are happening today in places like El Salvador” (17).
The story isn’t political because there is not enough evidence to credibly believe things will ever change between cultures who dominate and cultures who are dominated. Instead, the story is a manual on how to survive, written for much the same reasons Ortiz writes:
For my children, for my wife, for my mother and my father and my grandparents and then reverse order that way so that I may have a good journey on my way back home.
If the story is political in any way, it is political this way. It is sovereign: independent of our usual rhetorical structures, independent of our usual purposes in writing, independent of Anglos as an audience, only sharing what is universal—anger, hurt, love, getting on with life—because there is no way not to share those universal feelings when telling a good story. In short, it is political in that it refuses to mirror Anglo society. And that does change us, because it forces us to accept that the way we mentally organize the world is not the only way. We have to let go of our expectations, our politics, and enter the story on its own native terms or sit around the peripheral only half getting the humor, which is what I spend much of my life doing. But that too is a good journey.
It is significant that Alexie closes with these parallel journeys. The narrator and his girl friend can both say sorry, but she, very Anglo, ends by saying, “I want to change the world” (19).
The narrator, in contrast, closes by saying:
I wish I lived closer to the river, to the falls where the ghosts of salmon jump. I wish I could sleep. I put down my paper or book and turn off al the lights, lie quietly in the dark. It may take hours, even years, for me to sleep again. There’s nothing surprising or disappointing in that.
I know how all my dreams end anyway. (19)
For her, there is still the possibility of a better world, that distant horizon, that brighter tomorrow, that final frontier, that constant movement that keeps her from the present.
For him, there are only the ghosts of some better yesteryear and the heaven of now (with or without sleep). There is only the past and the is. The future does not exist, except as another is moment, because experience has taught him dreams “end anyway.” Surviving, carrying on, is moment by moment, story by story, survival.
© Steve Brown, 2012
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