War Daces

     This is Lena Gruber.

     

     War Dances, by Sherman Alexie, is a short story narrated by a middle aged, Native American man, who presently worries about his current illness, while he also reflects on his past experiences with illness: his father's and his own as a child. It is divided into multiple sections that vary in length; the division is determined by his train of thought as he reflects on his past experiences. He recounts various stories and expresses different thoughts and ideas in reflection to those stories. Each section has a title and a number that more or less summarizes the contents of that specific section. Most of the sections tell stories that take place in the past and include dialogue and/or his stream of consciousness. The narrator is presently worrying about his potentially malignant brain tumor and his mortality due to his mysterious loss of hearing in the right ear, but the reader only really understands the core of his anxiety after he gradually reveals the story of his alcoholic father and his previous illness as a child. The reader, by the end, understands that he isn't really worried about his own life, but the well being of his children after his death, because he knows what it's like to lose a father. The reader understands this because of the stories that emphasize the important relationship he has with his father and therefore explains his current fears of death as a father in present time. He explains that although his father has disappointed him so much so many times, he still loves him and misses him. This short story, regardless of the multiple references to death and illness, is told in a voice that is familiar. The narrator curses casually in the reoccurring dialogue and also in his own stream of consciousness. Indirectly and directly, the narrator uses humor as a coping mechanism. He makes jokes when approaching his illness and his father's. His sarcasm when responding to others and also in his stream of consciousness gives the reader the ability to laugh off and get through, the difficult, unfortunate events that the narrator must survive and suffer through.