Summary and Analysis: Amusements and A Train Is an Order of Occurrence Designed to Lead to Some Result
New Characters
Sadie: Victor’s sidekick in this story.
Dirty Joe: the drunken man that Victor and Sadie humiliate on the carnival ride.
Samuel Builds-the-Fire: Thomas’s grandfather, who suffers an emotional decline culminating in death in this story.
Summary
“Amusements” and “A Train Is an Order of Occurrence Designed to Lead to Some Result” both relate the experiences of minor characters who suffer humiliation.
“Amusements” is an exceptionally short story, just over four pages long, about a cruel joke played on Dirty Joe one night at a carnival in Spokane. Dirty Joe, a drinker infamous for sneaking into bars and finishing the leftover drinks at the end of the day, becomes the victim of Victor and Sadie. The friends find him unconscious along the midway, become distressed at the attention he draws from white tourists, and decide to resolve the situation by giving him a ride on the roller coaster.
This solution causes great mirth at Joe’s expense; a crowd gathers to watch him ride the roller coaster. Victor and Sadie become aware of the possible consequences of their actions only after Joe awakens, vomits on the platform of the ride, and receives a kick from the carnival operator. The fun ends with the arrival of a few security guards and the flight of the perpetrators.
Victor finds himself in a fun house in the final scene, where he contemplates the crazy mirrors that distort his reflection. These distortions become metaphors for his betrayal of “another Indian,” whom he “offered up . . . like some treaty.”
Samuel Builds-the-Fire is the victim of humiliation in “A Train Is an Order of Occurrence Designed to Lead to Some Result.” He is fired from his job as a maid at a motel in Spokane on his birthday. Although the news shocks Samuel, he seems to take it in stride, picking up his check and departing without complaint.
The injustice of this treatment is revealed as Samuel walks home. Samuel is the grandfather of Thomas Builds-the-Fire and a respected storyteller in his tribe; he is surely the source of his grandson’s talent. His skills are evident in his renowned ability to compose stories on request, from his observations of the immediate environment.
Yet these skills seem out of place in a white culture that grants neither money nor recognition for them. Samuel accordingly gives up on his future after being fired and takes his first drink at a local bar. The alcohol prompts reflections on past experiences with, and stories told to, his children. The story of coyote’s accidental creation of white people from nail clippings stands out in Samuel’s mind. After hearing this tale, Samuel’s children claim that white people must be crazy. Yet Samuel wonders whether his own tribe is not just as crazy. His life story justifies this concern. Samuel’s family has followed the customs prevalent in white culture and abandoned him at the end of his life. He is completely alone during his days at work and nights at home in a small apartment. Nevertheless, Samuel repays neglect with kindness. He even occasionally gives the prostitutes at the motel money and begs them not to work for the day.
The story ends suddenly and tragically. Samuel’s reverie ends as the bar closes. He stumbles through the city, wanders onto railroad tracks, and falls onto the rails. Samuel closes his eyes, a train nears, and the tale ends with a cryptic, but ominous, line: “Sometimes it’s called passing out and sometimes it’s just pretending to be asleep.”
Analysis
Together these stories explore the experience of humiliation. The emphasis, in particular, is...
(This entire section contains 1170 words.)
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on the possible causes for humiliation in the Native American community. The plotlines of both tales demonstrate that these causes range from the racism of whites to the despair of American Indians. Humiliation is inflicted from both outside and within the tribal community.
Victor and Sadie humiliate an unconscious and helpless Dirty Joe in “Amusements.” The motivations for their actions are twofold; the friends dread the prospect of dragging Joe out of the midway and fear the mocking stares of the white carnival-goers around them. The solution that they devise, the decision to put Joe on the roller coaster, directs their fear and disgust back onto a member of their own community.
The betrayal of the drunken man highlights the damage that racism has done to this tribe. Victor and Sadie find it easier to join in the mockery of Joe than to defend or help him. Alexie does not, however, excuse this decision; the pair might feel pressured to act inhumanely, but that fact does not decrease their culpability. Descriptions of the gaping and laughing crowd on the midway contrasted with a limp and unconscious Joe on the roller coaster demonstrate the cruelty of their actions. Finding such amusement at the expense of a helpless, even seemingly lifeless man is finally not that amusing.
In the end, the two flee and escape punishment. Yet they do not escape responsibility. As Victor runs through the fun house and sees his warped reflection in the mirrors, he realizes something in himself, and his culture, has been similarly “distorted” beyond recognition. He is in danger of losing the “good part of . . . [his] past.”
Samuel suffers a similar loss in the second story. His humiliation is so complete, however, that only death can resolve it. In fact, both the causes and results of humiliation are different in this story. Samuel’s story is the result of a more systematic problem in Native American culture with far-reaching implications, beyond those of the actions of just a few individuals on one night.
This man is an elder with knowledge and talent as a storyteller that should afford him a key role in his family and tribe. Yet he has been abandoned in his old age and forced to live alone in a small apartment and eke out a living as a motel maid. It seems that his friends and relatives have forgotten the value of the cultural knowledge that might be gained by respecting and integrating a man like Samuel into their lives. The isolation of elders so common in white culture has infiltrated Native American culture in this story. It is therefore appropriate that Samuel wonders whether Indians are not just as “crazy” as whites.
After Samuel is fired on his birthday, his isolation and humiliation are complete. He has been denied even a peripheral role in both Native and white cultures. Instead, Samuel knows what “the horse must have felt when Henry Ford came along”; he feels out of place with his surroundings, obsolete. In the absence of a place to go or a role to fill, he simply gives up and begins to drink for the first time. This decision finally seals his fate as Samuel becomes lost and confused at the end of night and presumably dies on the railroad tracks. Alexie provides little hope or comfort at the end of this tale.
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