Presentation

Sherman Alexie is a Spokane-Coeur d’Alene-American novelist and writes his experiences as an indigenous American with ancestry from several tribes. He grew up on the Spokane Indian reservation. Most of his films, novels, short stories, or even poetry that he wrote were about the lives of American Indians. In his early life, he struggled with alcoholism, and I find it very interesting how it plays out in this story with his engagement with a bartender. The main claim I believe that the author is trying to achieve with this piece is that the selfless you become, the more good things go your way. We learned that Jackson goes through a lot of obstacles in order to save up $999 in order to win his grandmother’s regalia. Throughout the story, we know that whenever Jackson would receive money that was given to him, he would often treat his other homeless buddies with food or taking them out for a few drinks. A rhetorical term that stood out for me was the use of satire. Jackson would always make a joke about serious situations, one of them being a moment he would laugh after being found passed out in the rail tracks by his friendly cop. The use of satire made the story effective because it allows the audience to see that Jackson is an honest, outgoing person. Somebody that never looks for trouble, and even with having a selfish goal, he goes out of his way to care for the people in his present time.

Reflection

What You Pawn I Will Redeem

            I didn’t had to do much in order to prepare for the presentation, it mainly came from reading the story and looking up facts about the author and its relation to his work. It was pretty easy coming up with things to talk about. To help me not forget the stuff I was going to say, I made sure to write it down and bring it to class to present it, that way I set myself up for success.      I feel that because I was able to write down what I was supposed to say, the presentation went as smooth as it could go. If it wasn’t for that, I would most likely have been struggling to figuring out what I was going to say next. What I could possibly do better next time is also writing down the questions at the end of the presentation. It would help me a lot because I was stuck trying to figure out what questions to ask for a moment, but I was able to ask some simple discussion questions.