[Sherman Alexie]

I have read Sherman Alexie’s work before, and I find him fascinating. He’s just so down to earth. What You Pawn I Will Redeem had a structure to it that I don’t think I would ever personally use. The time signatures are very business-like, but while it works here, I wonder how different it might have been if he just explained with a sentence how time had passed, or allowed the reader to formulate that he was in another place and therefore time. It begins and ends at noon, so I feel that has a significance maybe even beyond the story itself (I wonder how much Spokane mythology is here).

            In terms of the chapter, this story certainly follows a very basic conflict (found grandmother’s regalia), crisis (must get $999), and solution (is given regalia) form. Nevertheless, there are tiny subplots in each time section, always with the other characters involved departing the scene. When it comes to story structure, it’s not about reinventing the wheel – it’s about applying the wheel in new ways to create more complex mechanisms.

            I have talked to a lot of friends about writing, and often there a hang up about plot structure. People like to wave their hands and say “all stories are the same”. Reading A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut, I am familiar with the graph patterns of stories and I think it’s an interesting way to look at a story at its bare minimum. I think “Pawn” could be drawn as a dreamcatcher – which seems oddly stereotypical for some reason – but it’s true. It has a cyclical nature, as though it could be spun and at any moment there is a mini rise and fall of action within it. The inside of the dreamcatcher is an elaborate web of crossing strings and beads, and this seems to accurately describe the relationships Jackson Jackson has with the other people he communicates with. There is a point of no-return where everything changes, and I would say it’s with the police officer. Instead of self-indulgence, he uses to cop’s money to feed the Aleuts. While the outcome is the same (they disappear) Jackson’s conflict has changed. His problem is no longer that he can’t hold onto money because he’s getting drunk, it’s because he is helping someone else.

            Finally, I want to relate to the quote in the chapter, “All good stories are sad.” Alexie’s character Jackson is not Cinderella. The ending is bittersweet. The goal of the plot is accomplished – the crisis is resolved – but was that really the crisis? All through “Pawn” we see homelessness, drunkenness, poverty, and cultural displacement. People come in and out of Jackson’s life until he is the only one left standing. His words, “It’s OK. Indians are everywhere” is misleadingly hopeful. The world is full of these “dispensable people” who are invisible to our mainstream culture, despite having been here first. Jackson is so happy to get the stolen regalia back for $5, but really, shouldn’t it have been free? Shouldn’t he have been given a home and a job and a new life? Isn’t that what he really deserved? So this is a story where nothing is actually resolved or concluded, just rises and falls in the normal turn of life.