Superman And Me

     Like any writing piece, this one presented multiple messages. When you read any work of literature there always different ways of looking at it. For example, you give 100 people the same sheet of paper. On the paper there is a single sentence that says "The boy picked up the apple". When you ask these people what their opinion on it is, you might receive similar answers. Such as "Who is the boy?", "What did the boy do with the apple?", "Where is the boy?", "When does this take place?", "Why did the boy pick up the apple?". However you might find at least one person out of the hundred who is willing to ask "Why was this written?", and that is the question that came to my mind as I read "Superman and Me".

     Who was the author writing this for? When did the author decide that it was a good time to share his story with the world? Why did the author write this novel? What did he hope to accomplish while writing this piece? These are all thoughts that must come up when properly analyzing a work of literature.

Who Was The Author Writing This For?

     Like many other writing pieces, "Superman  and Me", was meant for various readers. However I believe this was written especially for Mr.Alexie's people and his enemies. That is why he broke up the passage into two portions, both with contrasting tones. The first of portion spoke from a third person view of Mr.Alexie's life in the hopes of sounding modest (As shown Par.5 Line 6-8). This explained his upbringing, his interest in books, the challenges he faced in his environment. So I believe this was written for his people, to relate to them, show them they weren't alone and draw them in to the reading. This is similar to how a movie may show something insightful that you can relate to or that you're interested in during it's opening scenes. Mr.Alexie knows that his people do not enjoy reading (As shown in Par.2 Line 1-3), so he must draw them in as soon as possible. 

     On the other hand, the second portion of the passage was directed more so to Mr.Alexie's enemies or the "non-Indians". In the second portion of the novel, Mr.Alexie spoke in first person which in my opinion made his tone seem rather confident. By speaking in first person, he seemed to have a sense of pride in what he was saying. As though he is subliminally saying to his enemies "Yeah, I said! What you gonna do about it". 

When Did The Author Decide It Was A Good Time To Share His Story?

As far as I can tell from the complexity of the reading, Mr.Alexie is a rather intelligent person. Also since he is an avid reader, I would be inclined to assume that Mr.Alexie has a lot of patience, seeing how that is often a virtue associated with reading. So taking into consideration his modest beginning in the first half of the novel and his confident tone in the second portion, I believe that he was always confident in his abilities and he always wanted to lead his people from the "non-Indians". When he was younger he pretended to be modest, non-opinionated, and a follower because it suited his situation best at that time. Seeing how he grew up being taught by "non-Indians", It was so much easier to be accepted by his people and his enemies if he played the part and stayed quiet.

    So as time went on he learned more and more, continued his reading and waited until he was at a point of power where he believed he could truly help his people.