Identity

Identity is something that has been discussed throughout the class, especially pertaining to those that have crossed some kind of border. The feeling of being lost, floating in a world that has been immersed with thoughts, traditions, rules, and other things unknown to the individual or individuals in question. Where is the safe haven or is there one? For many of the characters, there is never again going to be a place that is truly home, the characters are broken and hopeless in a strange world that they can’t or won’t adapt to because adapting is accepting the things that were never asked for in the first place, things that leave the characters vulnerable in a strange and unnatural world, a world that isn’t theirs.

The characters all try to find their own identity through their changing world. For example, in Ceremony, Tayo resorts to using the traditional ways of Native American healing and visits a medicine man. He also find his happiness in nature, back in the place that his people originally lived. In Sherman Alexie’s short stories the characters identity with alcohol and the remembrance of the old traditions, such as the boys in his story “A Drug Called Tradition.” The characters are not drinking alcohol, but instead have visions induced by some other drug that is not mentioned. In a way, the boys are partaking in a tradition of their tribe from long ago and visualize themselves being warriors in the old sense, which is impossible for them to achieve in the present day. Another way that the characters of his stories identity with their tribe is through story-telling, which Thomas Builds-the-Fire does throughout his whole life, but his people stopped listening to him, which almost seems to say that nobody identifies with the old ways of their people anymore because of things that stand in their way.