User:Atcovi/Sherman Alexie Prompt

Sherman Alexie vividly describes his experiences of living as a Native American in his short story, Superman and Me. The author recounts how feeble-minded his fellow Native Americans and how poor the quality of education is in his reservation. These ideas spawned from when he read a Superman comic book and became fascinated with paragraphs. This evolved into a love of reading books and attempting to save the lives of uneducated Native Americans meeting the false stereotype that Native Americans are uneducated. The main idea in Superman and Me is that reading and gaining knowledge is key to becoming educated.

He recalls his memoirs using descriptive language with an informal tone, which allows the readers to understand the story easily. Examples of this relaxed tone are the second sentence of the story: "I learned to read with a Superman comic book. Simple enough, I suppose." This allows the reader to understand and connect with the story as they feel the author is communicating with them one on one. He also speaks in the first-person, as can be seen in "I refused to fail. I was smart. I was arrogant.". The first-person narrative enhances the one on one feeling the reader feels as they read Superman and Me. One can picture themselves as the author going through what is being narrated in the short story. Lastly, the author, albeit only one time, asks questions in the last paragraph: "Who were they? Where are they now? Do they exist?". This causes the reader to ask and answer the questions himself, to which increases engagement in the short story.

His wording is effective as it is able to draw and lock a reader in a situation where one must finish reading the short story before proceeding to complete any other task. The informal tone, first-person narrative, and the continued engaging wording allow the reader to visualize and understand the short story. Engaging a reader into a story is a masterpiece work from the author, in which that is exactly what Sherman Alexie has accomplished.