The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie

Hi-yo silver, away!

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven  has got to be one of the coolest titles for a short-story, ever. It seems fitting to also be the name of Sherman Alexie's excellent short-story collection. Many of the stories in here are about the struggle of Native/indigenous people to break free from the stereotypes, myths, and roles imposed by American culture. The playful and provocative title also highlights the author's dark humor and irony to expose racism and historical injustice. Similar to other writers that we have come across on this blog that focus on systematic racism or intergenerational trauma, humor becomes an act of resistance. Pay attention to the narrator's dreams in this story, which underline many of these key ideas and crop up again and again throughout the collection. 

There’s a funny and somewhat sad scene at the beginning of the story where the narrator wanders into a 7-Eleven in the middle of the night because he can’t sleep. Bad dreams. On a literal level, the dreams keep him awake, but they also point to something deeper. His restlessness, his loneliness, and the emotional baggage he can’t outrun. He’s drifting, looking for some kind of human connection, which is why his awkward, slightly absurd conversation with the graveyard-shift clerk feels both random and oddly necessary. It’s a moment of humor, but also one of need.

Through his reflections on a messy breakup with his ex-girlfriend, we learn that he left the reservation for Seattle, hoping for something better, only to return after the relationship falls apart. Back home, he’s unemployed, stuck, and weighed down by regret. The dreams become a space where guilt, shame, and longing surface, often accompanied by the historically violent conflict between indigenous people and white settlers. When he starts playing basketball again, it’s one of the few times the story lets him feel briefly whole, grounded in his body and his community. Alexie keeps the plot deceptively simple, but those dreams (both the ones that haunt him at night and the larger, broken dreams of escape and reinvention) carry the emotional core of the story, highlighting just how badly the narrator wants forgiveness, belonging, and some kind of peace.