What you Redeem I’m Going to Pawn

Keith Baillis
March 9, 2009
English 250: Textual Analysis
What you Redeem I’m Going to Pawn

“What You Pawn I Will Redeem” by Sherman Alexie is a poignant story of hopelessness written in a comedic tone. It creates an endearing character out of an older alcoholic Indian and is used by Alexie to illustrate many of the issues in Native American culture. Homelessness and redemption are among the various themes included in the story that will be discussed. Humor, however, is certainly the most brilliant theme that works together with the character’s attempts of redemption and the hopelessness of being homeless.
One major theme in “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” is homelessness. The audience is able to see this from the first line of the story, which says “One day you have a home and the next you don’t” (Alexie, 12). This sentence dually refers to Jackson’s state of homelessness, living day to day on the streets of Seattle, as well as the cultural aspect of homelessness, bearing in mind that he is a Spokane Indian. Just as any Native American, he is linked to an unfortunate past of cultural denial, forced relocation, and stolen land and property. The concept of homelessness is present in many ways when the audience considers Jackson’s character away from the initial exposition. First of all, he is homeless in the exact sense of the word; he lives on the streets of Seattle. However, thinking beyond the literal meaning of the word homeless, we are able to learn a lot about Jackson from statements such as “I’ve been disappearing ever since” (Alexie, 13) and “I’ve been killing myself ever since she died” (Alexie, 24). These statements (referring to an assortment of pain through his life) show how the word homeless, in the materialistic sense, has been exceeded by two more profound meanings. The events of Jackson’s life have so strongly affected him that they have left him stranded in multiple denotations of the word homeless. His life of despair has resulted in becoming both culturally and psychologically homeless.
Homelessness has been a reoccurring theme through Jackson’s life. He is a Native American and already has to deal with his people’s ancestral suffering. If that isn’t enough, it seems that he has the roots of homelessness growing in him. He has never been able to stay in one place for a long period of time without losing what can be considered his current “home.” Flunking out of college can be one of the first instances of homelessness in Jackson’s life. When a student goes away to college, the campus becomes his or her new home. Jackson was given that opportunity, but unfortunately he failed out of school, resulting in the loss of his first home-esque setting. Then there are the failed marriages. When one engages in such an extreme act as marriage, they typically categorize that as the state they want to spend the rest of their life. Marriage is like two people’s “home” until death do them part. As stated, these marriages however failed, resulting in the next occurrence of homelessness in Jackson’s life.
Another important theme in the story is redemption. The story itself is, at first glance, based on a Native American man’s goal to possess his deceased grandmother’s regalia that was lost to theft. Looking deeper than that, though, there is an ongoing theme of redemption. The true reason that Jackson wants to acquire the regalia is to bring his grandmother back to life; to redeem her. He says “I wondered if my grandmother’s cancer started when somebody stole her powwow regalia. Maybe the cancer started in her broken heart and then leaked out into her breasts” (Alexie, 17). This reveals that Jackson’s external struggle withis to redeem his grandmother’s death. Another example of striving for redemption is with the three Aleut cousins. They have sat for eleven years, struggling to redeem themselves.
Through the story, Alexie uses humor to stabilize the seemingly negative tone brought on by Jackson Jackson’s life of despair. Through the initial exposition, the reader learns about Jackson’s bleak past when he says “I grew up in Spokane, moved to Seattle twenty-three years ago for college, flunked out after two semesters, worked various blue- and bluer-collar jobs, married two or three times, fathered two or three kids, and then went crazy” (Alexie, 12). The audience knows that Jackson is 41 years of age, failed out of college, has been divorced, and has been homeless for the past 6 years. Life seems to be constantly raining on Jackson, but one of his unique qualities is that he is nonetheless able to look at his own issues and employ the notion of humor to cope with them.
Humor acts as a remedy for Jackson’s own internal suffering. In life, the practice of humor is regularly considered its own medicine used to find relief during situations of negativity. The audience can see this a lot in the life of Jackson, as he constantly speaks and thinks in a witty sense. In one part of the story, Jackson is woken up from a drunken coma on a set of railroad tracks by a familiar police officer. The officer tells Jackson that he is taking him to a detoxification clinic in which he replies “No, man, that place is awful. It’s full of drunk Indians” (Alexie, 25). They both share a laugh at this, but beyond the expected response of laughing, Officer Williams seems to act as a voice for the audience. When he finds Jackson, he says the things they have been thinking and asks the questions they have been wondering. After finding him in that hung over state, he says “You Indians. How the hell do you laugh so much? I just picked your ass off the railroad tracks, and you’re making jokes” (Alexie, 25). In response to this, Jackson says “the two funniest tribes I’ve ever been around are Indians and Jews, so I guess that says something about the inherent humor of genocide.” Through this conversation, the audience can see that Jackson would much rather find a laugh and feel content than let it ruin his entire day. Jackson has inadvertently used humor as a treatment of his despair and seeming hopelessness. This is especially clear when one considers Jackson’s past. Not many people are emotionally hardwired with the capability of grasping and moving on from past events, such as multiple divorces, failing out of college, and being a homeless alcoholic. A sense of humor is a clear ingredient in the recipe for mental healing, which is demonstrated through the story by Jackson.
Throughout “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” the themes of homelessness and redemption are evident, as they are definitive of Jackson’s life. Jackson Jackson is a comical Native American who uses humor as a literal adhesive to unify each of these themes. This story is important to us because it preaches a message of appreciation to the readers. This definitely needs work.