A Battle of the Mind

            In “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,” Sherman Alexie sets-up the narrator as someone to criticize for his failure to transcend the limited expectations he had set for himself due to his overwhelming notion that no one else believed he could succeed outside of his reservation.

Throughout the short story, although the police officer (assumed to be white) informs the narrator that “[he doesn’t] fit the profile of the [white] neighborhood” (183), most every other time a limited expectation or stereotype of Native American Indians is presented, it is done so by the narrator, implying that he is internally building upon and supporting the limited stereotypes and expectations he believes whites hold towards Indians. Speaking on behalf of the 7-11 clerk, the narrator says, “He knew this dark skin and long, black hair of mine was dangerous. I had potential.” The clerk never mentions anything about the Indian narrator’s appearance that made him nervous, and although his actions were recognizably cautious to the narrator, it could be assumed that anyone working the graveyard shift at 3AM would be nervous by a lingering customer. The narrator, himself, opens the story with his tale of being “robbed once too often” as a graveyard clerk at a Seattle 7-11 (181). He also identifies with the clerk’s caution to his presence in the store at 3AM when he says, “He looked me over so he could describe me to the police later. I knew the look. One of my old girlfriends said I started to look at her that way, too” (182). In other words, he’s admitting to having acted in the same way when he was a clerk. Therefore, although he is attempting to blame the clerk’s suspicious gazes on racism towards him as an Indian customer, his argument is weakened by his ability to directly recognize what the clerk is doing due to his past experience in the same position.

            Through examples such as these, it seems as though Sherman Alexie is attempting to mock the narrator’s position, pointing out the impossibilities of conquering pre-existing limiting stereotypes/expectations if one is not willing to conquer the tendency to subconsciously support those stereotypes/expectations. When the narrator eventually flees predominantly white America (this is implied by the narrator’s comments and actions, but never directly mentioned) and returns to his reservation, he succumbs to accepting an old Indian poet’s belief that “Indians can reside in the city, but they can never live there” (187). This idea works to stir the reader’s emotions (at least it did mine) to slight frustration that the narrator never made it evident that he truly fought to transcend negative Indian stereotypes, and, instead, he succumbed to them.

            This is what makes Alexie’s short story so powerful, because it stirs readers to realize the unfairness and frustrations of racism by placing them inside the mind of someone who is personally battling it himself – showing that it is not only a fight against the ignorance of an opposing race, but it is a battle against the mind’s tendency to grow to believe in the ignorance as well.