Pick one of the following that interests you and respond. Check off these requirements as you go

Walker

Which is more important: knowing and preserving your traditions or living them? Defend your argument, using the story for support.

Alexie

Read the following quotation from interviewer Ase Nygren and give examples from "What You Pawn I Will Redeem" to show the validity (or lack thereof) of Nygren's comment:

Given the inarticulateness of many of Alexie's characters, I also suggest that Alexie's narratives call attention to the inherent difficulties of representing suffering. The characters are muted by the traumas of hatred and chaos, loss and grief danger and fear, and cannot--except in a few rare cases--articulate their suffering. Instead, they tend to resort to self-destructive behavior, including violence and substance abuse. Thus, while Alexie's narratives demonstrate the need to give suffering a language, they also call attention to the inherent unsharability of suffering. (Nygren)

Work Cited

Nygren, Ase. "A World of Story-smoke: a Conversation with Sherman Alexie." MELUS 30.4 (Winter 2005): 149(21). Expanded Academic ASAP. Thomson Gale. Tennessee Board of Regents. 11 July 2007.