Free Custom «Big Mom» Essay Paper

Big Mom is a female character with memories likened to the 19th century. However, the author has not provided the exact age of Big Mom and it is not clear whether she grows old in any ordinary manner. The powers of Bog Mom are legendary, even though people of her own tribe do not believe in her existence. Besides being a medicine woman, Big Mom is also a talented teacher. Furthermore, she serves as a prudent commentator with a finely tuned lie detector. The author states that Big Mom coached the band and later they moved to New York for an audition with Calvary Records (Sherman 8). Alexie has used literary elements that are significantly important in portraying the realities of the present day Indian life.

In the fiction, a pivotal moment occurs when the Indian rock band had an opportunity to make it big at the NYC. During this point, a failure of Alexis’s guitar causes the rock band to return to the reservation where he is a humiliated man. Therefore, Alexie uses this to come up with an assumption that creates an accurate representation that the construed, generic Indian qualities can be attributed to diverse tribes. In the fiction, the author has described a nameless character as having cheekbones that are so big enough they can knock people over when he makes movements of his head from side to side (Sherman 11). These are the features used by the author to describe masculinity. The exaggerated feature of the cheekbone indicates an unquestionable character of the native people. For instance, the most prominent character is the Plains Sioux, referred to as ‘the-man-who-was-probably the-Lakota. The character of the man is not humanized in the story since the author had neglected to provide a name to him.

 

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The author describes a legendary blues guitarist and singer, Robert Johnson, who sold his soul to the devil at crossroads to be talented in playing guitar. Alexie has used the master narrative to provide an expectation that Big Mom is able to guide the characters with the traditional wisdom to a more authentic, content mindset, as well as a traditional life. However, Big Mom is unable to reach all things. Furthermore, Big Mon was not able to stop the men with their band if they were going to make their fortunes in NYC (Sherman 214). Big Mom had powers that came from constant reminder of their agency, telling them that it was up to them to make their choices (Sherman 216). On the other hand, Thomas’ mother used to sooth him to sleep with traditional Spokane Indian songs, and sometimes she would use Catholic hymns (Sherman 22).

Alexie has also stated that the funeral of Junior offers an example of Big Mom’s continuity to provide the rest of the characters with the possibility of agency. Big Mom contributed to the development of the characters in the fiction, for instance, when she brought Father Arnold to the funeral (Moore34). Alexi has major a major contribution to the emergence of just representation of Indians through the fiction by enriching the representation of American Indians on a cultural scene that indicates a contemporary and complex human character, in order to be free from the obstacles of stereotype-based imagology. The male protagonists are used to either perpetuate or interfere with the pattern of psychic dismemberment inherent in paternal characters that experiences an eruption in the identification of a signifier by psychic elements excluded in a national symbolic order (Gunn-Allen 12). In addition to the theme of masculinity of the paternal characters in relation to their subjects, its another manifestation is the occurrence of warfare. This is represented by the American troops that are stuck in the historic American wars against the aboriginal subjects.

To conclude, the historical elements are metaphoric for the identification process in this fiction by Alexi, and illustrate the psychical dysfunction or processes in paternal subjects that is parallel to the national collective failures suggested to the reference of the American Indian warfare (Moore 45).