Who is the indian killer alexie

Is there hope that humor could forge links? How are the casinos intrinsically ironic? Consider who owns them and who uses them. What is the poetic justice about the fate of Spud and Lyle? How are they hoist with their own petard? Who is Marie? How is she a fulcrum in the novel? Talk about her insistent provocation of Dr. Why is Marie so sure that John was not the Indian Killer?

We learn that Marie had boiling anger and vengefulness, even as a child p. She also has deep outrage about what has happened to Indians in modern life p. Talk about Reggie—his background and his behavior. Do you think he is a contender for chief suspect? Mather, wearing a huge bandage on his head, puts forth his academic theory. A capitalistic society will necessarily create an underclass of powerless workers and an overclass of powerful elite.

As the economic and social distance between the worker and elite increases, the possibility of an underclass revolution increases proportionally. Sherman Alexie is skewering academic palaver, but is he at all serious?

When do the threads of the mystery start coming together? How is Wilson pivotal? Why does Wilson incur his fate at the end? What are the apocalyptic implications of the novel? Disaster and doom pervade the book. What does this mean? What is the result of the ambiguity at the end? Does it imply that blame cannot be fixed on one person? That violence may be in all of us, with hate, prejudice, paranoia, and vengeance? John Smith , the main character in the book, is the son of a fourteen-year-old Native American.

After his birth, he was taken away from his mother and adopted into a loving, white family and named John Smith. As he grows up, he is happy and content, but as he gets older, he sees that he is treated differently because of the color of his skin. He wants to learn more about his culture, feeling as if a piece of himself is missing. Therefore, instead of going to college, John moves to Seattle to work as a construction worker, as he seeks native American relations.

As the search for the killer goes on and on, tensions are high on both sides. White hotheads, possibly as much to disguise their own nervousness and fear as much as anything else, are starting to mouth-off at any Indians they see on the streets.

Throw into the mix a novelist who badly wants people to believe his claim that he is an Indian; a bigoted radio talk show host who keeps his listeners on the verge of anti-Indian violence at all times; and a young Indian college student who leads campus protests about the bigotry she believes is directed at Indian students like her, and the city is sitting on a powder keg. Bottom Line: Indian Killer is a memorable novel that only a Native American would have had the real credibility to write.

There is almost as much in between the lines of this one as there is in the plot itself. The mixture of politics and art is always a dicey subject for me. I tend to be against it, since nearly all art composed in the name of a political cause is terrible.

A recent exception to this is Sherman Alexie's Indian Killer, though I feel it is not nearly as good as it would have been had political voice not been the driving motivation behind it. Indeed, Indian Killer is chilling, and for all of the reasons Alexie does not want it to be. Alexie takes the leitmotif of the murder mystery for h The mixture of politics and art is always a dicey subject for me. Alexie takes the leitmotif of the murder mystery for his novel, though in truth it is only superficially a murder mystery; at its heart the novel is postmodern political zealoutry.

However, in nearly every sense it approximates genius in my mind. Even the title, Indian Killer, is an ellusive play on words, for one wonders the entire length of the novel if it refers to a killer of Indians, or an Indian who is a killer. The plot follows in pseudo-potboiler fashion a chain of Native American murders in Seattle. The victims are scalped, skinned, and mutilated. Xenophobia ensues and our heroes, two Native American's, take up the gauntlet to prove that the murderer is not one of them, but is only creating an MO to lead authorities astray while at the same time creating a racist craze.

The true target is mystery novelist Tony Hillerman, whom Alexie goes so far as to parody in his book. Hillerman is known for his Native American mystery's and, implies Alexie's work, actually works against the cause of those he claims to champion by distracting the public's attention from the true cause of the Native American's plight.

Hillerman closes our attention in on a single bad guy who is finally caught and punished. Alexie shows us that the true evil is much larger: it is all of society. Alexie indicts not a single psychopath, but all of American society, in the murder of Indians.

My biggest complaint is Alexie's prose themselves. They seeth with hatred on every page. His characters are developed and rounded only to the extent that they are abused and angry. Otherwise, they are cardboard cutouts. Likewise his style is easily digested, clipped, engaging, and quickly paced per the potboilers he so obnoxiously imitates. The style approaches passionate use of language only in the most politically rabid passages. Elsewhere, he seems unmoved by the loves and lives of his own characters.

Only his hatred and indictment move him to a stirring use of the English language. This, frankly, disgusts me, and the unevenness of style and low regard for literary aesthetics was enough to send this reader into paroxysms of regrettable proportions. Alexie takes a good idea, marries it to a bad one, and hates the hell out of anyone who will read it. But then there is an angry female university student, Marie, and the angry radio talk show host and finally we get to know an ex-cop turned novelist, Jack Wilson.

There are a host of other sub-characters along the way. Breeds, hybrids, tribes, races, family, and so on. The tension in the city is described in detail, but I never felt any true suspense. I found it very unsatisfying. The story revolves around some gruesome ritual murders with supposed Native American background, and paints a multilayered picture of the relationships between whites and Native Americans. It is neither hopeful nor trying to mend the relationship between Native Americans and the white society of the U.

Indian Killer is a portrait and an analysis of the status quo and it stings. Another fantastic Sherman Alexie book - can he do no wrong? CAN HE? This was one of the most directly brutal books of his I have read. Due to the intense theme of racially motivated murder and violence Alexie successfully explores much of the hatred, prejudice, ignorance, anger, frustration, and more felt in America.

He manages to explain and sympathize with the violent actions of his mentally ill protagonist but not justify them - something crucial to understanding race in America. The ending o Another fantastic Sherman Alexie book - can he do no wrong? The ending of the book perfectly explains the difference in prejudices: violence against white men comes from pain.

Violence against Indians comes from hatred and ignorance. But both forms have much in common: frustration, anger, loss, etc. The characters are acting out in a framework of racism that has given them limited choices. Absolutely recommended, like all Alexie books. He continues to be one of my favorite authors. It's a thriller.. There're plenty of characters, the most sympathetic for me being probably the activist Marie Polatkin, the one who articulates the most accurately IMO.

I'll be reading more by him. Maybe it is partly because this was the first novel I read in six months, but I basically devoured this book and really enjoyed it all the way through. Great pace, great characters, good suspense, funny in parts. I really appreciated that Alexie made almost everyone at least a little sympathetic - even the characters that I really expected to dislike.

Even the terrible people usually had a least one moment of humanity, so the reader could glimpse something good in them. Also, I love books that zi Maybe it is partly because this was the first novel I read in six months, but I basically devoured this book and really enjoyed it all the way through. Also, I love books that zigzag between characters this fast, with chapters only four or five pages long sometimes, because I end up unable to put them down.

I keep just one more chapter-ing myself right on through to the end of the book. I want to tackle some of Alexie's short stories now. I've only ever read one or two, I think. I read this book for the ATY reading challenge Week A book where the main character or author is of a different ethnic origin, religion, or sexual identity than your own.

This is a hard-hitting book. Sherman Alexie does not pull any punches. The scenes are graphically real. And you know, as the reader, that people are being treated this way today.

Were treated this way yesterday. Will be treated this way tomorrow. Sad, but true. In the end, it is a who-done-it without a who. Reading through I read this book for the ATY reading challenge Week A book where the main character or author is of a different ethnic origin, religion, or sexual identity than your own.

Reading through the book and trying to identify the Indian Killer, you will think you know, but in the end Who knows. Yes, urban Indians live this life, whether they are street people or not. Urban minorities live this life.

And where are the urban majorities? They are the ones turning their heads trying not to see or hear. A compelling eye-opener! I hope you read it. This is the second Sherman Alexie book I have read. It's about a serial killer in Seattle whose victims are white males. It also follows several different characters, all of whom could be the serial killer.

Meanwhile, racial tensions in Seattle mount and racially motivated violence spirals upward. Alexie's two main questions seem to be: 1. What makes someone a "real" Indian? What to do with all these white people? Some of the Native folks in his books know their ancestral languages and so This is the second Sherman Alexie book I have read.

Some of the Native folks in his books know their ancestral languages and some don't. Some live on the rez and some in cities. Some drink alcohol and others Diet Pepsi. Within the interweaving threads of all of these subplots, the question is always being asked as to whether any of these lives could be considered any more "authentic" than the others.

His other books weren't available at the library, so I went for this one. It was an interesting comment on racial tensions, but seemed overstated, was extremely grotesque and had one of the worst, most unsatisfying endings I've ever read. The characters were more like charicatures and, even though it was listed as a mystery, the mystery is never solved. I'll have to read one of his other books to redeem my opinion of him. Cliched writing, especially the dialogue, flat characters, obvious stereotypes, an over the top plot.

When an author is making a point I prefer that he not use a sledge hammer. I didn't even really dislike this book I simply didn't care about it. I'm reading House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday which deals with the same issue in a much more accomplished and nuanced way. Wilson tries in vain to convince John, as he has convinced himself, that he is not a white man at all but that he, too, is Indian.

Like Mather, Wilson is representative of the type of white American for whom cultural appropriation is seen to be a positive affirmation of respect, but which is in fact deeply harmful. Both men profit by writing about Indians and presenting false and damaging material for consumption by a gullible white audience. Wilson, a man who is totally sympathetic to the Indian cause is nonetheless seen as being instrumental in the destruction of true Indian identity.

After disfiguring Wilson, John leaps to his death, and when questioned by police, Marie Polatkin is adamant that John was not the Indian Killer. In the final scene, the killer performs the Ghost Dance and his strength increases as more and more Indians join the dance — a dance which, if successful, will destroy the white people forever.

That spirit, the book posits, is immortal and will continue to immerge from time to time until the purpose of the Ghost Dance is realised. Adam Matlock said…. Sad that he distances himself from this novel, although I can imagine any conversation he may have tried to have about it would have been unable to surmount the book's anger. I can hear the cries of "reverse racism" now I just finished it and really did enjoy it, pretentious literary ambitions and all.

The portrayal of John Smith's mental illness, though it takes a long time to be named as such in the book, is especially stirring. Loree Westron said…. Hi Adam, Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts.

I think you're probably right. I can imagine Alexie took a lot of flack from certain quarters. Particularly in his early books, Alexie's anger is sometimes hard to take. But as a 'bleeding-heart-white-liberal' I think it's important for mainstream America to face up to the past and to allow people to still be angry about the horrors that were inflicted on Native Americans.