Comparative analysis of Superman and Sherman Alexie's narrative techniques

¶ … Superman and Me" by Sherman Alexie and "One Writer's Beginning" by Eudora Welty

These two stories compare modern writers' accounts of their childhood and how they learned to read. Sherman Alexie is a popular writer who has had an exceptional career. He is a preeminent Native American poet, novelist, performer and filmmaker. He has garnered high praise for his poems and short stories of contemporary Native American reservation life. Eudora Welty has also had an exceptional career for her short stories and novels about the American South that has resulted in countless awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Both of these authors developed an exceptional love of language early in life that later became their life's work. It is fascinating to read about their stories which provide insights as to how a natural talent can be further honed into a successful career that touches millions of lives.

Discussion

Sherman Alexie accounts for his learning to read through the use of a Superman comic book. "I learned to read with a Superman comic book. Simple enough, I suppose. I cannot recall which particular Superman comic book I read, nor can I remember which villain he fought in that issue" he mentions (Alexie). He remembers how he associated the pictures with trying to explain what Superman was doing in the frame. His desire to begin reading from an early age could be attributed to his genetics, his environment, or most likely a combination of both.

Alexie's father was an avid reader who would read books on a variety of different subjects. As he recalls about his father (Alexie):

"He bought his books by the pound at Dutch's Pawn Shop, Goodwill, Salvation Army and Value Village. When he had extra money, he bought new novels at supermarkets, convenience stores and hospital gift shops. Our house was filled with books. They were stacked in crazy piles in the bathroom, bedrooms and living room."

Eudora Welty had a similar environment in home as a child. She recalls that there were books nearly everywhere in the house (Welty):

"Besides the bookcase in the livingroom, which was always called "the library," there were the encyclopedia tables and dictionary stand under windows in our diningroom. Here to help us grow up arguing around the diningroom table were the Unabridged Webster, the Columbia Encyclopedia, Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, the Lincoln Library of Information, and later the Book of Knowledge."

Each child was surrounded with books in their houses but books by themselves are nothing more than a material possession.

However, it was the content of the books and the culture within the homes that had an appreciation for them that was truly the source of value in these writers' childhoods. Eudora's mother read to her constantly as a child. "She'd read to me in the big bedroom in the mornings…She'd read to me in the diningroom on winter afternoons in front of the coal fire…at night when I'd got in my own bed…sometimes she read to me in the kitchen while she sat churning (Welty)." By contrast, Sherman didn't have the same direct contact with his parents as they read to him. Rather he was more motivated to read by mirroring his father's love for books. "I can remember picking up my father's books before I could read. The words themselves were mostly foreign, but I still remember the exact moment when I first understood, with a sudden clarity, the purpose of a paragraph. (Alexie)." After this revaluation, he viewed most of the world in terms of paragraphs; his family having a set of seven paragraphs, one for each member, as a subset in a broader world that was made of other paragraphs (Alexie).