"Tony's Story" - Wu

Hi, Allison Wu here.“Tony’s Story” reads as a bad dream turned nightmare. There is a sense of doom in the story from the beginning as we move through this scene of life on a reservation dominated by fear and nature’s response to a drought. The dreamlike qualities all extend from Tony’s fear of the white man with the hidden eyes. The dreaminess of the story is found in both its use of high intensity, detailed descriptions of the setting and the simultaneous vagueness of the setting. The vibrant descriptions of “dry weeds and tall yellow grass that broke through the asphalt and rattled in the wind” (Silko, 583) are moments that remind the reader of how real and specific our surroundings can be in a dream. But the haziness of the transitions in setting also speak to how when entering our subconscious world, there is never a trustworthy beginning or end. Silko masterfully creates these cloudy transitions through switching setting seamlessly with continuity that makes us feel like it is all one, continuous stream of thought from Tony’s mind. We move from fear to fear as the dream brings us further into its nightmare qualities. The vague naming of the “big cop” (Silko, 580) and his perpetually covered eyes reminds us of how dreams refuse to give us the details in some of our biggest fears that we think could somehow give us answers to why we fear. The story ends with a nightmare consequence as the blood from Tony’s victim won’t soak into the dust like Leon’s did. The rain clouds begin to relieve the long-felt drought that has dried any hope for Tony and his people to escape their reality of the white man. We only hope to wake with the promise that droplets of rain will wash away the “glossy, bright blood” (Silko, 583) stained in our minds.