The Reservation Cab Driver by Sherman Alexie

Historical Pain Is Fused into ‘The Reservation Cab Driver’
The author of ‘The Reservation Cab Driver’, Sherman Alexie, has dedicated his life to writing poems, short stories, and novels. He has depicted characters who are living or struggling as Native Americans in the United States in his work since he was a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian and growing up in Wellpinit, Washington, on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Sherman Alexie published the book The Business of Fancydancing on May 1, 1992. In it are five short stories and forty poems. One of the poems is “The Reservation Cab Driver.” Since this poem deals with a Native taxi driver’s life (if readers could not notice through the title), it is crucial to know the background of the author and history of Native Americans. The cab driver and his circumstances are calmly described in third-person view. Yet, by authentically depicting a Native American cab driver, the author criticizes the United States society (to which aboriginal people cannot adjust) and the United States government that does not help the Reservation tribes, despite the government’s crimes against these people in the past when the U.S. authorities committed genocide and forced them to move off their native lands. In other words, the author fuses painful historical background into his work.
Overall, the tone of ‘The Reservation Cab Driver’ is realistic, descriptive, and tranquil even though this poem condemns the attitude of society and government toward Native Americans. The author uses this measured tone with multiple period marks throughout indicating when he wants readers to take a short break from reading. Alexie hardly utilizes dramatic words in this poem. The speaker of ‘The Reservation Cab Driver’ only conveys the driver’s appearance and circumstances as they are. The poem’s power lies in its ability to make readers feel a sense of darkness and oppression through the whole poem by what is not overtly stated: the author’s sparing use of emotion and hyperbole gives the words a haunting quality that allows them to stay with the reader long after the poem is concluded. In this poem, Alexie shows how forceful a minimalist approach can be.
In the first to the third verses, the driver’s method of work is illustrated. He waits for his customer in his car. The price of his taxi is a beer for a mile. He picks up Lester Falls Apart who lives in the West End. Lester Falls Apart is one of the characters in the book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993) which is also written by Sherman Alexie. This book is about two Native American men who take a journey to recover the ashes of one man’s father. Through Lester Falls Apart, readers could notice that the cab driver usually takes indigenous people like him as clients.
In the fourth to sixth verses, Alexie begins to castigate the U.S government in earnest—though still with a very subdued and subtly ironic tone. When the Congress raised the minimum wage, the cab driver also raised his rates to a beer and a cigarette for each mile. This sly jab at American consumerism shows that Native Americans are not really a part of American capitalism, although many years have passed since the days when Americans and Native Americans were at war. But the main reason the Native Americans could not adjust to American society is shown in next two verses. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) “evicted” him. HUD is established for people who cannot afford housing, which means HUD exists to help people by giving them homes—not to oust them from the homes they are already in; yet in typical Alexie irony, the cab driver gets put out to pasture by HUD. As a result, the driver could only live in his cab with old blankets. Old blankets are another reference to the historical pain of Native Americans—a reminder of their humble origins before American consumerism made everything big and bright (and expensive). The old blankets are also a reminder of another memory: when immigrants came to America from Europe, they brought a different culture and new technologies—but also infectious diseases that they passed to the Native Americans through blankets when they bartered. Many years later, Europeans and Americans became immune to those diseases, but the Native Americans did not. At the time, the American government sought to exploit the Old World diseases as a biological weapon to wipe out Native Americans. That is why the “old blankets” reference packs a double punch.
But that’s not all: the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) “rescinded” his benefits. BIA (like HUD) also exists to help people, especially Native Americans—yet the Alexie ironic humor continues—and since no bureau of the U.S. government intends to help the Native American cab driver, he could only do add a can of product for every mile. In those three verses, the author bluntly depicts how the government treats Native Americans. Alexie does not beat around the bush on this point: he utilizes the real names of government departments. In doing so, readers can understand the driver’s circumstances and accept the author’s criticism more easily.
In the seventh to ninth verses, the author describes the cab driver’s work again. Seymour climbs into his cab and refers to it as a “pony.” The cab driver doesn’t enjoy his joke, saying “Ain’t no pony. It’s a car.” This suggests that the driver always has to deal with people making a joke about his ethnicity. Also, this shows the difference between Seymour’s and the cab driver’s personality. By referring to the car as a pony, Seymour is seen as idealistic and funny. However, the driver says, “It’s a car”, which means the cab driver is realistic and factual. This is probably because the cab driver lives with struggles as Native Americans. In the eighth verse, a busy time of the year is described when the powwow is held. The powwow is also used to refer to Native Americans. Additionally, even though it is the busiest time of the year, the driver doesn’t want money. He gets paid in quilts, beads, fried bread, and fire wood. He doesn’t use the U.S. currency but rather still uses traditional trading method. This shows readers again that he has not adjusted to capitalism.
In the last verse, the driver picks up Crazy Horse. The historic Crazy Horse was a Native American war leader of the Oglala Lakota in the nineteenth century. He took up arms against the United States federal government to fight against encroachment by American settlers on Indian Territory and to preserve the traditional way of life of the Lakota people. When he takes the cab, he wants to go to the same place the cab driver is going. However, the cab driver has nowhere to go. Thus, Crazy Horse also has nowhere to go. This suggests that Crazy Horse has perhaps also been evicted and suggests that although Crazy Horse was a war hero, he could be evicted, too. The author criticizes how the U.S. government treats Indigenous people again in the last verse, with the war hero Crazy Horse. Even though Alexie rarely uses dramatic vocabulary in “The Reservation Cab Driver,” he uses the word “goddamn” in the last line. The word “goddamn” emphasizes not only the fact that they have nowhere to go but also the bitterness underlying the author’s ironic humor. Alexie’s dissatisfaction at his people’s oppression finally explodes with the forceful use of this curse word in the last sentence.
To summarize, the poem “The Reservation Cab Driver” by Sherman Alexie describes a Native American cab driver’s life. The author characterizes him and his life calmly in third-person view by using a simple, sparing vocabulary. In this manner, Alexie subtly and ironically condemns the United States government, pointing out the historically poor way the U.S. has treated the Native Americans and showing how that treatment continues on in the cab driver’s own life.