Does the past affect the future?
The past is a complex paradox. Sometimes the past can be a dark place, that not even the brightest candle can illuminate. However, the past can be the key to victory and can illuminate the light to our winding road.
Sherman Alexie
Sherman Alexie is an award winning author, poet, novelist and filmmaker. Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. Involved with crime, alcohol, or drugs, Alexie’s protagonists struggle to survive the constant battering of their minds, bodies, and spirits by white American society and their own self-hatred and sense of powerlessness.
Alexie's work is not about identity, but about the anger and hurt felt towards those who have wronged them. His writing is a way of coping with the pressures and hurts of being a minority in America.
Alexie's work is not about identity, but about the anger and hurt felt towards those who have wronged them. His writing is a way of coping with the pressures and hurts of being a minority in America.
"Indian Killer"In the book, Indian Killer by Alexie Sherman, the protagonist, John Smith, lives a winding life that is a metaphor of his complicated past and history. The history of the Indians in America is intertwined in this story and shows how one event in history carries into the future for years to come. Sherman Alexie’s work in this novel is graphic and messy, but he is trying to show what it is like to experience racism for what it is; no longer will he cover up the hard truth. Indian Killer is a metaphor that indicates that the past affects the present and that one must overcome the past to truly live. John symbolically relieves the history of the Native American people and the serial murders he commits are the result of the his failure to overcome the past.
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“If you kill a black man, the world is silent. You can hear a garage door opening from twenty blocks away. You can pick up a pay phone and only hear the dial tone. Shooting stars sound exactly like the soft laughter of a little girl in Gasworks Park. If you kill a white man, the world erupts with noise: fireworks, sirens, a gavel pounding a desk, the slamming of doors.”
― Sherman Alexie, Indian Killer