Text Exploration for Sherman Alexie's The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn't Flash Red Anymore

Leads from the early claim that need exploration/development:

-Unique narrative style: What about this narrative makes it unique? How does Alexie tell the story and how is it different from the work of other authors?

-Humanizes his characters: If this is so, what is he doing to humanize them? Do they seem humanized? Can we as readers relate to and understand them?

-Flat Stereotypes: If these are not flat stereotypes, what are they? What makes them 3D and not flat? How are they different from other stereotypes?

Text Exploration

This passage is on the bottom of page 46, continuing through the top of page 47, and it’s when, after Julius and his friends have walked by, Victor is reminiscing about his past as a ballplayer, and the experience that led to the end of his career.

“While I looked at those close-ups of death and destruction, I lost it.[1] I think everybody[2] in that room, everybody on the team, lost[3] that[4] feeling of immortality.”

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1: It’s been a few paragraphs since we’ve heard from Victor about this need for immortality. Now, when it gets brought back into the story, it is in this sentence reintroduced as just “it,” not as immortality. When I first read this, I didn’t make the connection that it was immortality Victor was talking about. I thought he meant he lost his sanity, which would seem logical after looking at graphic pictures of gory injuries. This has the same effect as the very beginning of the story, when we are told there’s a gun but don’t find out till later that it’s a BB gun. We are only provided with limited information. But although this narrative style makes for a bumpy ride, it definitely helps humanize the characters. This is Victor’s train of thought, and like any real person’s, it is not neat and organized – it’s messy. He is not filtering his thoughts so they will make sense to us. For him, this immortality concept is so significant he doesn’t even have to refer to it as immortality, just as “it.” He knows in a heartbeat what “it” signifies even if we don’t.

2: There’s an emphasis on “everybody” here. Victor uses the word once, and then in the same sentence after the comma he uses it again. He somehow is able to know that every single person in that room lost that feeling of immortality at the same time and for the same reason as he did. How can he know that they all had the same experience? This seems like a stereotype in itself. Victor is prone to these sweeping generalizations – before he talked about the things that drive a ballplayer as if they’re true for every player (Alexie 46). We never actually hear from any other ballplayer during the course of this story that immortality matters to them. So why does Victor do this, and is it more than a flat stereotype? Well, in recounting the story of the lost game that led to him quitting his career, it’s likely easier to talk about it as if the team lost together because they lost the feeling of immortality, not that it was just him to blame. He’s stereotyping himself on purpose so as not to take individual responsibility. This is more than flat. This is something we do all the time, to make ourselves feel included, to avoid blame. So some stereotypes in this story humanize the characters rather than dehumanize them.

3: Saying they “lost” this feeling of immortality implies that at one time they had it, which seems true, because before Victor said it’s what “drives a ballplayer” (Alexie 46). For me, this “lost” idea brings to mind lost innocence, which essentially is what I think this is. There’s a hint of a coming-of-age story here. Everyone on the reservation roots for these heroes, these beings who will make them proud. Most of us have been someone’s hero, whether it be a younger sibling or a friend, and if you’ve ever done something that ruined you as a hero in their eyes, you know it hurts them as much as it hurts you. They say it’s hard to watch your idols fall. These Indians are living a very mortal life (if that makes sense?). They drink beer, sit around, get sweaty and drunk. But someone who could go farther, who could do better, has definite appeal. Being that reservation hero, that Indian who does not waste their time drinking, brings that feeling of immortality. They are the people who are expected to transcend the stereotype. But when these “heroes” are reminded of their mortality, of how easily they could die and be no one’s hero, they lose their immortality.

4: It may be insignificant but I was noticing the interesting pattern (or lack thereof) of articles in this sentence: first we get “that room,” then “the team,” then “that feeling.” The middle one with “the” is more vague, while “that” seems more specific, like gesturing to one specific thing. I think this could be for a reason. “That room” – that’s our setting (in Victor’s mind) right now – makes sense for it to be specific, and “that feeling” is the one and only feeling of immortality. But “the team”… I don’t know… I get the feeling this happens to many teams on the reservation, not just the one. Victor and Adrian discuss how many players have failed, and since Victor names the loss of immortality as the reason for change in a ballplayer’s performance, I’m assuming that elsewhere, with other teams on the reservation, they too lose their immortality. Maybe not by looking at pictures in a book, but by something. I think you can only pretend to be immortal for so long.

Bloodchild Table Notes

Table Notes for The Smallest Woman in the World

Narrative Reflection

All in all, I am pleased with my grades from this past semester. All of the comments and suggestions that you (Mr. Garces Kiley) put in my narrative and noted on my essay were very clear-cut, so no questions come to mind. I'll let you know if I think of any.

For things to work on, you told me that I could break the traditional essay mold a bit (while still keeping troubles, questions, etc. around) in order to deepen my ideas. This will definitely take some time for experimentation, so I'm going to try to pace myself, leaving enough time to play around with the format of an essay until I find one that really fits. Overall, really spacing out my timing is something I need to work on. I need to unpack some vague words more when I write an essay and give stronger evidence (among other things), and to improve these I really have to make sure I leave time to improve them. I want to continue doing numerous text explorations for my future essays, because I found them an extremely helpful tool with the F451 essay.

For in class, I aim to continue participating frequently, and try more to build on the ideas other people bring up. I want to continue taking clear reading notes - keeping them more concise should help with that. 

Final Project

Reading Notes

Fahrenheit 451 Tree Map and Essay Draft

Mollie Gordon

Literature 1/4/15

Fahrenheit 451 Rough Draft

            Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is well-known by people of all generations as a disturbingly accurate prediction of the future (aka our present-day society) in which technology is king, people are emotionless, and most central of all, books are burned. In the book, the people known as the “firemen” do not put out fires, they start them. They embark on midnight rides in their fearsome “salamander” fire trucks, answering the alarm that someone is keeping unlawful books. The firemen burn these books to prevent them from ever being read, as they threaten the “perfect” society that has been formed. Books have too many conflicting ideas for people to be happy – they can only cause chaos, not peace. The firemen stop at nothing to destroy books, willingly killing their owners in the process. The only reason the literature-preserving group of Book People has been spared is because they memorize books instead of keep copies of them, so the firemen have nothing to incriminate them. As Guy Montag discovers, the firemen seem willing to take any steps necessary to “keep their fingers in the dike” (Bradbury 62). To them, books are the enemy.

            However, the official logo of the firemen is the phoenix, a mythical bird that “built a pyre and burnt himself up… but every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, got himself born all over again” (Bradbury 163). Despite the fact that the firemen’s apparent intentions are to wipe out books, their logo seems to suggest that the books would miraculously rise up from the ashes instead of remain dead. This is troubling because their logo completely disregards everything that they stand for, and if their symbol speaks true, they are wasting their time fighting a undefeatable opponent. It is possible that the firemen, with their lack of knowledge, never recognized this blunder, but Captain Beatty is well-read despite his profession, stating that “Most fire captains have to be” (Bradbury 40). So if the chief purpose of the firemen in Fahrenheit 451 is to eliminate books from society, but their symbol is the phoenix, which would imply that the books would be reborn from the flames and therefore never truly be destroyed, then what are the true intentions of the firemen?

            One way to consider this is that the firemen realize that that there is something beyond the written/printed word: thought. This is what Faber is describing when he says to Montag “No, no, it’s not books at all you’re looking for!” (Bradbury 82). Books are merely paper and ink. When faced with fire, they are left nothing more than ash. But the ideas in books are immortal. This is what the firemen truly desire to eliminate in order to have the “happiness” they believe is necessary. They don’t know how, which is why those like the Book People are left unharmed – the firemen don’t know how to harm them. The firemen ultimately have no control over something so far beyond their reach. They are utterly powerless. But instead of admitting this, they choose a more accessible scapegoat, to appear to the people as though they are power: books. They put on the big circuslike show of book burnings which are in reality no more than smoke and mirrors, than flash and glam, to manipulate people into thinking that when books are burned, them and everything in them stays dead forever. Since the people are so entirely brainwashed, they never stop to question what is missing.

            A first point that is important to consider is how unbelievably important entertainment is to how this society functions. The citizens spend their days talking to their numerous (and expensive) TV walls and drowning out the world with their tiny seashell radios. They do next to no actual work – school is composed of “TV class,” and as we observe from Mildred, people don’t even put in the effort to butter their own toast. An interesting thing about this fluffy entertainment, though, is that at the heart of it is one thing: violence. Not something you’d expect in a society that claims to institute “serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag” (Bradbury 59). Their television programs often depict such senseless violence as people being chopped into bits while accompanied by laughter. It’s violence that poses no danger to the people, that they can watch from afar and enjoy. Which is ironic, considering the bomb threat looming over the community throughout the book that the people seem to be entirely unconcerned about. This ties directly into how book burnings serve their purpose so well. Fire mystifies people, as Beatty points out when he says “What about fire is so lovely? No matter what age we are, what draws us to it?” (Bradbury 115). What Beatty’s answer to his own question should be that fire has the power to save or to destroy. The slight flick of the wrist, a movement at the wrong time or at the right time, can alter its powers drastically. Watching books brutally burn has the same effect on the people as watching the White Clown chop off parts of his body – it’s violence being applied to someone other than themselves, to a scapegoat. People like scapegoats. There is nothing more comforting than not being the one the teacher yells at. But just like the violence seen on the TVs, it’s only there to cover something else up. The TV violence only hides the approaching bombs, the book burnings only hide the fact that the real magic in books is still out there. And the fascinating part about fire being both “good” and “bad” is true for TV too. As Faber tells Montag, “It’s not books you need, it’s some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the ‘parlor families’ today” (Bradbury 82). People in this community are not taught to see the two sides to something – instead they only can see one. Because of this they never realize that TV can enlighten instead of brainwash, and that fire can save instead of destroy.

However, there’s another piece of the puzzle besides the violence that makes book burnings manipulate people into believing them – their presentation. Now the firemen apparently burn books because they are a “danger” to society, but the strange part about their “purpose” is that if books were a true threat, they would go to the houses containing books and burn them the moment someone filed a complaint. But when Montag and the firemen are burning the house of the woman who would rather with her books than live without them, Montag realizes that “Always at night the alarm comes. Never by day! Is it because fire is prettier by night? More spectacle, a better show?” (Bradbury 39). If books were a pressing, issue they wouldn’t wait till night to burn the books if someone filed a complaint during the day. But book burnings are the nighttime version of the TV walls – TV is better by day, fire is prettier by night. Repeatedly in the book, book burnings are not compared to serious tasks, but to circuses. For instance, when Montag is about to burn down his own house, it says “Lights flickered on and house doors opened all down the street, to watch the carnival set up” (Bradbury 113). This is not the execution of an enemy, but a carnival, complete with “torch jugglers” and “fire eaters.” Circuses and carnivals are made to astound, to amaze, not to be truthful. That bearded lady may seem real, but in reality it’s just a lady with spirit gum attaching a fake beard to her chin. Fire eaters don’t really eat fire, they know a trick. It seems like reality but it’s all just a trick, like the parlor walls. Such a display dazzles and confuses. Beatty is continually described as having a pink, shiny face that is hardly visible through the plume of smoke from his pipe. You can’t truly look at him because of the smoke and mirrors throwing you off, and even once you get past them, all you can see is shininess. Shiny things can have a bright, glistening surface even when what’s under the surface is not bright and glistening. And it’s not only the show that works so well, it’s the actors. The firemen are ultimately nothing but actors. Instead of being picked for skill, they are selected because they look the part. If books were really a danger, it would seem that people with the right skill sets to burn them as quickly as efficiently as possible would be chosen for the positions. Instead, they are chosen for appearance, just like everything and everyone else. They are actors, meant to entertain, meant to smile their “fierce grin[s]” (Bradbury 4). And they seem to be in on the secret. Most of them at least – Montag only seems to be partially aware, but the part of him that is aware has a tendency to “wink at himself, a minstrel man, burnt-corked, in the mirror” (Bradbury 4). Beatty is also often described as “pink” and whether Bradbury intended this or not, one of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definitions of “pink” is “winking.” So all in all, book burnings are the show, the firemen are the actors, and all the people (and us) play the part of the audience.