101 pages • 3 hours read
Sherman AlexieThe Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaSymbols & Motifs
Crazy Horse
Crazy Horse repeats as a motif in several stories. Historically, Crazy Horse is remembered for mobilizing the Lakota Sioux tribe into battle against federal soldiers in the late 1800s, a time when nearly all America’s Indigenous nations had been conquered or had surrendered. His party defeated General Custer in the Battle of Little Bighorn, causing widespread fame and mythologizing among Indigenous and white Americans alike. Crazy Horse is the ultimate Indigenous warrior figure and therefore serves as a yardstick for the protagonists’ sense of success or failure in dealing with their own internal and external conflicts.
The most obvious use of the Crazy Horse motif occurs in the fourth story, “Crazy Horse Dreams.” Victor struggles with disillusionment in matters of romance and suffers from imposter syndrome, longing to be “authentic” in his Indigenous identity (37). After his sexual encounter, his disappointed love interest is “still waiting for Crazy Horse” (40). The first line in “Imagining the Reservation” begins “Imagine Crazy Horse” (149), followed by a set of alternate historical realities in which Indigenous nations are victorious. In “Somebody Kept Saying Powwow,” Junior’s game-winning basketball play causes an admiring spectator to state, “I think he was Crazy Horse for just a second” (206). Crazy Horse works as an ideal in the collective imagination of the tribe. He highlights themes of Identity Through Dreams and Visions and Storytelling as Creative Agency insofar as those on the reservation can borrow the spirit of his past triumph in order to forge their own.
Basketball
Basketball features in Alexie’s narratives not only as a common pastime for young people on the reservation, but also as a motif for potential Indigenous achievement. When Victor introduces himself, he remarks that his reservation consists of “[j]ust a school bus and a few hundred basketballs” (39). His comment suggests that the reservation’s hopes for success far outweigh its opportunities. As a fifth grader, Victor is mesmerized by the “possibilities and angles” that the game employs (175), calling them “beautiful.”
As with the Crazy Horse motif, basketball is a vehicle to greatness. However, it also carries with it the potential for stinging defeat. In “The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn’t Flash Red Anymore,” Victor reflects on his basketball glory days, illustrating why the sport has embedded itself into the Spokane Reservation psyche: “It’s that need to be the best, that feeling of immortality, that drives a ballplayer. And when it disappears, for whatever reason, that ballplayer is never the same person, on or off the court” (46). Victor exposes his personal desire to achieve, to ground his identity and make a name for himself, but his sentiment reflects the desires of the tribe as a whole. With a history of genocide intertwined with Indigenous identity, Victor’s community longs for its own “immortality” (46).
Basketball is a vicarious outlet for this longing, which explains why the reservation’s star players enjoy mythological stature. The community recasts these athletes as legendary heroes not only because they represent hope for the future, but also (and relatedly) because they represent the possibility of resurrecting the past: “A reservation hero is a hero forever. In fact, their status grows over the years as the stories are told and retold” (48). The basketball motif therefore develops all three of the collection’s major themes, drawing players and spectators into a collective identity that spans the past, present, and future.
Fry Bread
The restaurants and kitchens in Alexie’s short stories are filled with fry bread. Fry bread was developed by Indigenous tribes after the Indian Removal Act and became a food staple on reservations, primarily because its ingredients were government issued. To Victor, it is a comfort food, associated with his mother’s love and stability. In “The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor,” James identifies his wife, Norma, as “the world champion fry bread maker” (163). In “The Fun House,” Nezzy asks where her family would be if her “fry bread didn’t fill [their] stomachs every damn night” (77). Victor waits at the fry bread stand at the beginning of “Crazy Horse Dreams,” and in “A Good Story” Junior asks, “Can you hear the dreams putting on a good jacket that smells of fry bread and sweet smoke?” (148).
As a motif, fry bread develops the theme of Cultural Belonging and Isolation. Because it is an Indigenous food, it represents tribal connection to custom and survival. The implication is that as long as fry bread is cooked traditionally, Indigenous people and culture will survive. Fry bread ties into the collection’s overall theme of cultural belonging and gives context to Norma Many Horses’s metaphor that “Sometimes it feels like our tribe is dying a piece of bread at a time” (199).
Related Titles
By Sherman Alexie
