— Anonymous
The piece that I found to be rewarding was the excerpt from “The Toughest Indian in the World” by Sherman Alexie. To me, this piece of work stood out as I could resonate with it more than the others, this being set in America and in more modern times. Having a job as a news reporter, driving a Toyota Camry, and having relationships are all things I can more easily imagine and visualize relative to the other works of literature we have been exposed to. It still was a challenge for me to understand, as some of the language was a bit ambiguous, and also the main message took a bit of time for me to decipher. Toward the end of the excerpt, the protagonist, who until now has led a pretty mundane life, has picked up a Indian hitchhiker, as he has been thought by his father, and eventually ends up having sexual activities in a hotel room with him. Understanding why the main character, who had mentioned and proven that he is heterosexual, did what he did required further analysis. What further confused me was at the very end, where the main character does not seem too happy with what he had just done, and confusingly leaves his car and decides to walk home. Until further analysis via discussion questions, I did not notice the theme of hope that the author had stressed throughout the excerpt. After reviewing my fellow classmates’ discussion posts about the excerpt, I came to understand that salmon is a term Indians used to describe prosperity and renewal of life. I also picked up on the beginning and ending lines having the same message pushed across.
“My father envied those simple Indian hitchhikers. He wanted to change their minds about salmon; he wanted to break open their hearts and see the future in their blood.”
…
“At that moment, if you had broken open my heart you could have looked inside and seen the thin white skeletons of one thousand salmon.”
Both quotes focus on the “breaking open” of one’s heart in search of hope, or “salmon”. This bridged the gap for me, and I came to the conclusion that the protagonist was simply holding onto his hope, which he lost at the end, explaining why he reacted the way he had. I also took away the idea that maybe the narrator felt as if he had let down his father, who have thought him to never be like the white man; to never lose “salmon”. Native Americans have always been thought to be friendly to one another, and this notion is what I believe led the main character to commit what he had done with the hitchhiker in that room. The ending definitely gave me the impression that he had lost his salmon, and that potentially he had “acted like a white man”, something his father would definitely look down upon. These ideas and themes would not have been brought to light if I had not visited my colleagues discussion posts and written about my initial understanding of the text.
