Race Essays (1144 words) - Coeur DAlene People, Sherman Alexie

Expectations can alter a person?s ability to establish an outcome of choice. Society determines the role that every individual must adapt to in accordance to age, gender, sexual preference, race, ethnicity, and/or class. The struggle to define a unique entity can be overshadowed by the constant pressure to conform to the prototypical stereotype of human classification. A common example to this implementation is that Hispanics are lazy. A simple phrase like such can make the difference between surpassing the judgments and merely adjusting to life as a sluggish creature. In Sherman Alexie?s piece, Superman and Me, he excels the anticipated part portrayed by life?s discriminative system through the passion of obtaining knowledge from books. The author wanted the audience to be able to understand his view of equality by sharing his life story. He?s a Spokane Indian who grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern Washington State to a low/middle-class family that consisted of a mother, father, older brother and three sisters (pg. 11). The intention of emplacing the information in his introduction paragraph is for the audience to appeal to culture; it establishes the background and the reliability of the author to connect with the reader. He organizes his piece in a chronological structure. The beginning sentences foreshadow an event of his life and it opens a sequential form of narrative arrangement. He could not recall exactly what issue or plot from the Superman comic book he had read, but he knew that he learned to read thanks to it (pg. 11). Yet he expresses that reading is not an enjoyment or an ability that is restricted to a high level of income or class by saying: He [author?s father] bought his books by the pound at Dutch?s Pawn Shop, Goodwill, Salvation Army, and Value Village. When he had extra money, he bought new novels at supermarkets, convenience stores and hospital gift shops. Our house was filled with books?. In a fit of unemployment-inspired creative energy, my father built a set of bookshelves and soon filled them with a random assortment of books about the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, the Vietnam War, and the entire twenty-three book series of the Apache westerns. My father loved books, and since I loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well (pg. 12). Alexie?s argument against the discriminative eyes of the population begins to become stronger to detect in the middle of his piece of writing. This is an effective way to structure an essay. He reveals his past but does not intend to provide a clear purpose. It allows for credibility of the author, but also makes the reader to take sympathy and associate with his underlined ideals. This is an example of a planned way to appeal to pathos. An illustration can be found in the following sentence: ?Now, using this logic, I can see my change family as an essay of seven paragraphs: mother, father, older brother, the deceased sister, my younger twin sisters, and our adopted little brother? (pg 12). He starts to institute his voice about the main purpose of his literary work. The logic of his argument is that race and ethnicity can change views and victimize by labeling. He uses desired connotations and word phrasing to make his point across. As a child he was bright and taught himself to rea d. As advance as he was for a kindergartener, his brand as an Indian kept him from being congratulated. ?If he?d been anything but an Indian boy living on the reservation, he might have been called a prodigy, but he is an Indian boy living on the reservation and is simply an oddity? (pg. 13). In this sentence, the author speaks in a third-person voice to prevent from feeling the hurt of being painfully subjected to a lower standard. He used details that supported his intended effect. By calling smart Indians dangerous and stupid, he enforces the reader to comprehend the obscenities that are put upon a group of people without any knowledge of the individuals attached to these expressions. The author gives examples of ways that he experienced as a child in the following passage: They struggled with basic reading