Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Every Little Hurricane
This story is told from the third person and describes a party being held at someone's HUD home on a reservation. I looked up what HUD stood for and learned it was "Housing and Urban Development" meaning that home was sold from a foreclosure by the Federal Housing Administration. This relates to the recurring image of poverty Alexie is portraying with Victor's father not being able to afford any Christmas gifts. I also believe that the idea of good and bad parenting is in this story and "A Drug Called Tradition" because of the early age at which the Native American children are exposed to alcohol. I mean, this story is about a nine year wandering around a party full of adults binge drinking, two of which are fighting and no one seems to care. This also seems like a pretty regular occurrence for Victor. Another sad part relating to parenting is the way that Victor finds his parents passed out in a drunken stupor and how he describes the smells on both of them. It seems to be a perpetual cycle that is impossible to escape.
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Relating to the parents and the alcoholism that you mentioned, to me it also seemed like these people were not trying to make a change. It seems like they are stuck in this world where they are unhappy, but take no action to improve. The cycle that you mentioned could maybe end if someone tried to do something about it. People need to do more than simply recognize problems. The recognizing is not what counts, it is the initiative taken to break-free of this hold over the characters that really counts.
ReplyDeleteWell, i think Alexie uses "Hurricane" in the name to make clear how inescapable this cycle is. Like a powerful storm of cyclical winds, alcoholism, poverty and depression plague the reservation population to the point that it's all they know; and the children being exposed to it early in their lives, like in this story, is how each and every soul on the reservation gets trapped.
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