 |
| Crazy Horse. |
Victor is one of the main characters to appear in several short-stories found in Sherman Alexie's fantastic collection, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (easily one of my favorite literary titles). In Crazy Horse Dreams, Victor is attending a local powwow and hooks up with an indigenous woman in her Winnebago. In only a few pages, Alexie effectively captures the protagonist's frustrations regarding masculinity and being vulnerable in relationships. He is torn between traditional and cultural gender roles pertaining to ideals of male strength and the reality of unresolved emotional pain. The final line is bittersweet and succincty captures his internal conflict after he walks out on her during their amorous activities inside the Winnebago: "He wished he was Crazy Horse." She wants him to be like this powerful and legendary warrior but he feels inadequate to live up to such masculine expections. She seems to treat this romantic encounter as a fantasy and temporary escape from reality, rather than a source of true happiness.
On the reservation, love is portrated as something elusive or emphermal, rather than a stable or healing force. Both are seeking some kind of intimacy but their personal traumas continually get in the way of establishing a deep emotional connection. Victor uses humor as self-defense mechanism to push her away when things start to get serious whereas she has daddy issues and wants Victor to save her. Their witty banter forms the emotional crux of the story. They both display emotional detachment and there is a sense that love is doomed to fail, reflecting larger themes of disappointment in both personal and cultural identities. Meanwhile, the weight of historical trauma makes it even more difficult to establish a meaningful romantic relationship beyond this one-night stand. There’s an underlying question of whether true love is even possible within a world that is already broken by so much pain, suffering and oppression.
No comments:
Post a Comment