Summary and Analysis: Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock and This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona
New Characters
Norma Many Horses: a neighbor who breaks up a childhood fight between Victor and Thomas in these stories and appears in later tales opposite Jimmy and Junior.
Summary
Alexie adapted these stories into the main plotline for his film Smoke Signals. They focus on the relationships between Victor, his father, and Thomas. Victor narrates the action from a first-person point of view in “Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock,” the events related in the story all center on the relationship between Victor and his father.
Victor’s father was a hippie who attended demonstrations in the Vietnam era; his participation in the antiwar movement was even documented with a photograph printed on the cover of Time magazine. His father’s identity caused both excitement and confusion among protesters and the media. He was indistinguishable among the hippies, who were enamored with Native American culture, and an anomaly for the reporters, who emphasized his role as a “warrior” in the fight against the war. His political sympathies also resulted in a brief prison stint and a trip to Woodstock.
Evidence of these times lives on for the family in the sound of Jimi Hendrix’s music. In fact, the playing of “The Star Spangled Banner” is the common element in many of Victor’s childhood memories. It becomes a ceremony that the son performs to soothe his father after a night out drinking, and a conversation piece that prompts a discussion about the participation of Indians in past and present wars.
These experiences convince Victor that music is “powerful medicine” that can form bonds between people. He recalls conversations with his father, about the first dance with his mother, and his mother, about the times that his father played his drums, that support this claim. Victor associates the memory of his parents’ lovemaking, audible throughout the house at night, with the role that music played in their lives together.
Yet the story suggests that bonding over music does not create perfect relationships. Victor remembers arguments and conflicts, especially one that broke out between his father and mother over the death of Jimi Hendrix during a pilgrimage to his grave. This argument is associated with a growing rift between the couple that finally breaks the marriage apart.
The moment that Victor’s father left is a memory that each member of the family recalls differently. Yet, the facts are the same no matter how they are remembered. The difficulty, for Victor and his mother, is in understanding and accepting the reality of his father’s absence. Victor questions his mother about the situation; his mother looks regretfully at old family photographs. The grief and pain of the family is symbolized by a vision that Victor has one night. He thinks his father is outside, and he runs outside to ride with him on his motorcycle, but only sees the empty street. The story ends as mother and son comfort one another and eat breakfast.
“This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” resumes the family saga years later with news of the death of Victor’s father in his last known place of residence, Phoenix, Arizona. This story is told in a third-person omniscient voice; the overall mood of the narrative is accordingly less personal than that of the first story.
Victor is a young, unemployed adult at this time. He meets Thomas in the Trading Post after hearing the news and receives an offer of help. Thomas will finance a trip to Phoenix so that Victor can claim his...
(This entire section contains 1396 words.)
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inheritance: his father’s belongings, savings, and pick-up truck. All Thomas asks in return is to be taken along on the trip. Victor remembers the friendship he once had with Thomas and reluctantly agrees to this new partnership.
The narrative that follows alternates between the present journey and the past childhood of the two men. The memories help to fill in the gaps of their long history together and to establish the mood for the journey.
The trip to Phoenix begins on an ominous note, as Victor remembers starting a fistfight with Thomas that might have ended viciously if Norma Many Horses had not intervened. Yet, Thomas proves that he can hold his own with Victor now. During the plane ride to Phoenix, Thomas flirts with a white woman and learns that she was a former gymnast. Victor, surprised and impressed, asks Thomas to forgive him for the fight after they touch down.
The two friends seem to be back on equal footing; they work together to complete the tasks before them in Phoenix. The trip is less eventful than the memories that interrupt it. Victor remembers running from wasps and Thomas remembers making a promise to Victor’s father. He decides that the time is right to tell Victor about this conversation; after all, he is already in the process of fulfilling the promise, for it was an agreement to help Victor in the future.
A memory opens the trip back home; Thomas fulfills his wish to fly from the top of the schoolhouse, and Victor jealously watches his courageous fall to the ground. In the present, the friends take turns driving back home, with the ashes of Victor’s father stowed safely between them. The drive brings reflection and reconciliation for the pair. Thomas decides to keep on telling his stories, whether anyone will listen or not. Victor, on the other hand, determines that he cannot be friends with Thomas, despite all that has occurred. They both agree, however, to pour the ashes of Victor’s father into the waters of Spokane Falls, so that, in Thomas’s words, he will “rise like a salmon . . . and find his way home.”
Analysis
These stories provide new problems and revelations in the life histories of both Victor and Thomas. The contrast between their childhood memories and present experiences, in particular, helps to explain the paths that each takes at the end of these tales.
Childhood memories are emotionally charged for Victor. He attests to the presence of both affection and conflict driven by a cycle of drinking, fighting, and lovemaking in his family home. Victor, an only child, is literally the product of this cycle, “a goofy reservation mixed drink.”
Music provides the primary touchstone in this unpredictable environment; most of the moments of connection and understanding between Victor, his father, and his mother are linked to music, especially Jimi Hendrix songs. Yet the family cannot be held together by this tenuous structure. Victor’s father leaves one day on a symbol of freedom and adventure, a motorcycle. The abandoned mother and son are left to their own devices and the disapproval of the Reservation. Victor accordingly becomes a symbol of assimilation for his friends and neighbors, another sign that Native Americans are adopting bad white habits, like abandonment.
It is not surprising, then, that Victor displays such uncertainty toward his childhood specifically, and his American Indian identity more generally, in other stories. He must rebel against this upbringing to some extent—and especially against the memory of his father—in order to establish his own sense of self. This challenge fosters a defensive exterior—seen in his conflicts with Thomas—that both helps and hinders his future relationships and experiences.
Thomas, on the other hand, has always been certain of his Native American identity, for better or worse. His stories, in both past and present experiences, clearly provide the most prominent symbol of this certainty. Thomas continues to tell them, over and over again, whether or not anyone wants to accept him or what he says. The second story demonstrates that this role—that of storyteller—has its own pros and cons. Thomas is scolded, isolated, and even attacked by his peers as a child; yet his loneliness breeds wisdom and understanding beneficial to himself and others. After all, Thomas draws on these skills to reveal an important truth to Victor, that his father cared enough about his son to elicit a promise for assistance in the boy’s future.
It seems that this realization is enough to provide both men peace in this moment; they part ways at the end of the story still unsure of what the future holds, but content with both the past and present.
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