The Lone Ranger

For class this week, we were assigned to read Sherman Alexie's short story entitled The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Although the title confused me due to my lack of knowledge on who Tonto is, I quickly began to grasp the notion that the speaker saw himself as an outcast, lonely and separate from the majority of society. After realizing that Tonto is a fictional Indian character who serves as the sidekick to the Lone Ranger, I understood the struggles that the character faced. There was the white graveyard shift cashier at 7-11 who was suspicious of his late night Creamsicle craving, the white girlfriend who viewed him as an untrustworthy drunk, and the white son of a BIA chief who was challenging his Native American basketball skills in front of his entire tribe. Interestingly, the distaste shared between these three different opponents serve as the objects of purpose in the story. They all symbolize how the character wishes for something that just isn't within his reach: feeling like the majority. His minority puts him in a different position in society and he takes note of that quite often, explaining how this does in fact make him feel like the Lone Ranger's sidekick. It challenged me to think, in a perfect realm such as heaven, which would I choose? Would I choose to continue living my life as a person of minority. Or would I take the alluring approach and opt to become a person of majority?