This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona

This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona

-       Sherman Alexie (1994)

I remember I had this dream that told me to go to Spokane, to stand by the Falls in the middle of the city and wait for a sign…I stood there for an hour waiting.  And then your dad came walking up.  What the hell are you doing here? He asked me.  I said, Waiting for a vision… Your dad was my vision.  Take care of each other is what my dreams were saying.  Take care of each other.

            The body of this story represents many things for me.  In specifics, it represents the difference between innocence and corruption: purity and impurity.

            Thomas stands for a friend of complete sincerity and occupies genuine traits that include him being able to remain true to the kind of person he really is, a storyteller.  Through his upbringing, never does he once change the kind of boy and eventually man he has become because of what society deems acceptable and unacceptable.  Victor on the upper hand, represents the opposite.  He represents a child’s innocence and naivetés to what is strange and what is not.  He knew no better of the kind of person Thomas was as a child until he grew old enough to realize that people categorized Thomas in a file outside of the social norm.

            This quote for me stands out in its own meaning that no matter how a recipient treats another, no matter the crude remarks they’ve made or things they’ve done in the past, taking care of one another is the utmost important thing anyone can do for one another.  If we were on our own always, we’d have no chance at survival.  No one person can be one hundred percent independent and have help from zero outsides.  It’s inevitable that someday, randomly or not, we’ll need the hand of another to get to that next step in our lives. 

            Victor has been treating Thomas poorly ever since they were teenagers and yet Thomas holds no grudges, holds no anger or bitterness.  He is who he is and knowing that he has not one friend to listen to him and his stories, he continues being “him.”  Victor, even after everything with the father and the traveling to Phoenix makes a remark to himself indicating that he knows he will not be able to publicly befriend Thomas in fear of “the shit” his friends will give him.  He is the typical socially inclined figure of a community and as long as he remains apart of “the rest of the crowd”.