Breaking and Entering

Main Plot Summary

In Sherman Alexie's Breaking and Entering, the protagonist accidentally kills a teenage burglar in his home. He had meant only to protect himself and he reacted mainly as a reflex when the burglar ran toward him intending to make it past him to escape from the crime scene. Unfortunately, the single swing with his son's Little League baseball bat turned out to be a fatal blow even though that was hardly the intention. The author assumes, probably correctly, that the police treated the investigation as completely routine at least partly because the burglar was black. The African-American community in the neighborhood, including the family of the dead burglar, rallied to support his family and to protest his killing by a white man. Ironically, the homeowner was not actually white but Native American and, therefore, of a racial heritage whose people had also suffered tremendously at the hands of the white man in prior eras of American history. In fact, there was no racial element to the incident: the homeowner had no idea what the intruder's race was and harbored no racial animosity. Meanwhile, the black community apparently ignored the fact that the principle cause of the tragedy was the choice of the young man to burglarize a home and not race.

Prediction of Public Response in an Alternate Scenario

In all likelihood, had the homeowner been black, the local community would have viewed the event as just a tragedy but not necessarily the fault of the homeowner. It is doubtful that it would have inspired any sort of demonstration or protest by the family. If anything, it probably would have resulted in increased promotion of programs designed to prevent juvenile delinquency, such as by supporting more programs and opportunities for young people in the community to reduce their involvement in crimes and other potentially destructive, dangerous, or asocial activities.