Reservation Realism: A Hard Look at Reservation Life

In Sherman Alexie’s “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven”, Alexie uses what he refers to as reservation realism in his stories. From the evidence provided in the stories, reservation realism is the incorporation of events common to or typically associated with Indians and reservation living in order to make the story seem more real or complete.

The Fun House is a short story about a mouse running up the pants leg of the storyteller’s aunt, causing a dramatic scene between the woman, her husband, and their son. The woman, upset that neither her husband nor son tried to help free the mouse and instead made jokes about it, walks down to the creek, swims for hours, and chants at them “One dumb mouse tore apart the whole damn house” (p. 81). Alexie admits in his introduction that he “wildly exaggerated” the story, and that the only truth in the story lies in the mouse running up his aunt’s pants, therefore it can be assumed that examples of reservation realism can be found in his exaggerations (xx).  Before going down to the creek, the woman says to her son “look at you, thirty years old and no job except getting drunk. What good are you” (78). This example of reservation realism shows a major issue which plagues reservation life: alcoholism. Native American alcohol abuse, while stereotypical, has some truthful ground. According to Fred Beauvais of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, “some Indian youth become heavily involved with alcohol and illicit drugs at an early age and continue that pattern into at least young adulthood. Approximately 20 percent of Indian youth in 7th to 12th grades fall into this category” (254). The history between Natives and alcohol dates back to the arrival of European colonists, who would trade alcohol to the Natives. When strong alcohol was first introduced, “tribes had little time to develop social, legal, or moral guidelines to regulate alcohol use,” thus resulting in alcohol abuse (Beauvais 253). Alcoholism is one of Alexie’s examples of reservation realism because it is associated with the day to day lives of Indians living on the reservation.

In the story The Trial of Thomas Builds-The-Fire, it can be assumed that no right minded judge, or court appointed attorney, would allow a man to be sentenced for war crimes committed by another man over 100 years earlier. The reservation realism in this story lies within the wrongful sentencing of a man who could inspire his race. Thomas Builds-The-Fire was originally arrested for holding the “postmaster hostage… with the idea of a gun and [he] had also threatened to make significant changes to the tribal vision” (93). Indians have been oppressed since the arrival of European colonists in America. As colonists came to the new world, the Natives were pushed further and further west, until they were assigned places to live, what we now call reservations. The arrest and sentencing of Thomas Builds-The-Fire can be compared to the arrest of Martin Luther King Jr. in Birmingham during the civil rights movement. Both races have a history of oppression, and both men are punished for attempting to make a change and inspire their race.

Sherman Alexie draws inspiration for this book from his experiences on the reservation, but he only gives the “biased, incomplete, exaggerated, deluded, and often just plain wrong” perception of a single individual recalling events from the entire reservation’s lives (xxi). Reservation realism is Alexie’s way of filling in the gaps with logical and likely details.

Beauvais, Fred. “American Indians and Alcohol”. National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Vol. 22, No. 4 1998. Web. 27 Sep. 2012. <http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh22-4/253.pdf>