Category: What You Pawn I Will Redeem

In Sherman Alexie’s short story “What You Pawn I Will Redeem,” the twenty-four hour journey that Jackson embarks on in reclaiming his grandmother’s regalia proves to do him way more good than he could have ever thought possible when beginning. Alexie uses the characterization of the main character, Jackson Jackson, in order to reveal the transformation he experiences throughout his journey. In short, Jackson is a homeless American Indian living in Seattle, Washington who goes through many trials over a twenty-four hour period in order to earn enough money to buy back his grandmother’s regalia which he has found in a local pawn shop.

Jackson’s original character proves to be one with absolutely no regard for family, but the moment he is introduced to the regalia this changes significantly. Alexie begins his story with a character who has a no-strings-attached kind of attitude towards life. He says at the beginning of his story how he has been married a couple of times and even fathered a few children, yet he seems to show absolutely no interest in who they are or where they are. While discussing his history and how he came to be a homeless man, Jackson mentions that “piece by piece, [he] disappeared” (Alexie). Just by this small piece of information, he is automatically alienated from what is perceived as normal by the reader. Not many people would nonchalantly say that they have just slowly let go of all their relatives. Obviously, at one point, family meant something to him, but over time it meant less and less and he started to drift away. This aspect of Jackson’s character plays a key role in recognizing the change that he eventually makes. When Jackson realizes that he has found his grandmother’s missing regalia in a pawn shop, he seems very concerned and goes straight in to discuss the matter with the pawn shop owner. It is here that the transformation being made in Jackson’s character becomes obvious. In order to prove himself, he tells the owner with a sense of pride in his voice that “my family always sewed one yellow bead somewhere on our regalia” (Alexie). Clearly family history means something to Jackson after all, because why else would he know this very specific piece of information about his grandmother’s regalia? It’s almost as if now that Jackson has something to work for, his sense of family and culture have flooded back to him. Because he has been homeless for so long, it is possible that he also lost touch with what it felt like to have a family and to have a past. The moment he sets eyes on this family heirloom it is evident that family actually does mean something to him, and thus his journey and transformation begin.

Throughout his twenty-four hour adventure, Jackson’s character also goes through personality change. At the very beginning, before the regalia has even come into the picture, Jackson gives us a little bit of background information on himself. At first he is characterized as serious by revealing to the reader that “being homeless is probably the only thing I’ve ever been good at.” This gives the reader a sense that Jackson isn’t the most confident person in the world and hasn’t necessarily ever had something to work for. The serious tone in his voice shows that this is not something that Jackson finds laughable. There is no way he has not ever been good at anything, but it is apparent that he has been dealt quite the rough hand over and over again which would cause him to feel this way. At first, his character seems rather pitiful and somber, but that also undergoes a transformation for the better. Over the course of his day, his friendly, humorous side becomes visible. Eventually, something that would probably be a big stressor for someone else, such as trying to come up with $999 within a twenty-four hour period, Jackson just seems to laugh off and make light of the situation. Even Officer Williams, the cop that woke him up, comments and asks him “How the hell do you laugh so much? I just picked your ass off the railroad tracks, and you’re making jokes. Why the hell do you do that?” For the cop, and for the readers, it seems strange that Jackson is able to laugh about such serious stuff. First of all, he is homeless and has basically nothing to his name and at the same time is very concerned about buying back his grandmother’s regalia, yet he still finds time to laugh and have a good time. There are obvious reasons for his change of heart and change of attitude: he now has something to actually work towards.

Jackson’s perspective on the world and people who are different than him also changes from beginning to end. At first, he is characterized as a person that would not look twice at someone who isn’t an Indian. Before starting his story, he mentions that “Indians have to work hard to keep secrets from hungry white folks”. From this comment it is obvious that Jackson has some issues with whites. His homelessness most likely plays a huge role in this attitude. While living on the streets, the treatment he got from those more fortunate than him, in this case it would be white people, caused a bitterness that is hard to get rid of. The moment he finds the regalia though, this aspect of his character seems to improve rather quickly. He now has to rely on others to find different sources and outlets to earn money, and beggars can’t be choosers. Although he does tend to still hang out with primarily Indians, he must seek help from others. After his many ups and downs throughout the day, Jackson comes to the conclusion that there are some good people out there, and race doesn’t determine that. It isn’t until a serious time of need comes up that one realizes there is more to people than what is on the outside. His change in character is proved through his willingness to show compassion and understanding towards a different group of people, which all came about through the journey in reclaiming his grandmother’s regalia.

In conclusion, it is indisputable that Jackson transforms throughout the story in a multitude of ways. He goes from someone who shows absolutely no regard towards family to wanting to protect and redeem a precious family heirloom; he goes from someone who is down in the dumps about his life in general to a very lively, funny human being; he goes from someone who would not look twice at a person different than him to relying on others and noticing the good in everyone. All in all, it is safe to say that the character of Jackson Jackson faced an incredible improvement over the course of his twenty-four hour journey.

Wealth is not equally distributed and hard work can one day earn the kids great things In the two stories, Jackson and Sylvia both have something that symbolizes something that very important to them. Since they have trouble with money, they cannot afford the item that has great importance to them. No matter how hard they work to earn the money to pay for the item, it just won’t be enough. Stories use symbols to make the writing unforgettable, it gives the meaning to the story. In both the short stories What You Pawn I Will Redeem by Sherman Alexie and The Lesson by Toni Cade Bambara, have many symbols to represent the ideas. Each story has a reason for continuing. In What You Pawn I Will Redeem, Jackson, a homeless man misses his family dreadfully but he has nothing to remember they by until he discovered his grandmother’s powwow regalia. That regalia gave him the reason to work as hard as he can to earn money to buy it back from the pawn shop owner, who said that he would have to pay $1000 for it. In the short story, The Lesson the kid’s tutor brings them to a toy story far away from their neighborhood. All the toys there are way too expensive to actually be played with, Sylvia really wants the toy boat, but there is no way she could ever afford it. She says that she will work as long as it takes to make enough money to buy the toy boat. Like Jackson in What You Pawn I Will Redeem, Sylvia wants something that is way too expensive but no matter how much money Jackson and Sylvia both works to earn money there is no way that they could save up the amount they need because they need money to buy food and water or in Jackson’s case, waste it all the money on alcohol. These items, the regalia, and the toy boat might mean something really important to Jackson and Sylvia but to someone else, they don’t mean anything. Throughout both stories, the readers learn that wealth is not equally distributed and hard work can one day earn them great things.

In the story What You Pawn I Will Redeem, there are many symbols but the main one of the story is the Regalia. Jackson is a homeless man who has a family but has friends but they keep leaving or dying. All Jackson wants is something to remind him of his family, like his grandmother’s powwow regalia. Which he found in a pawnshop, all he wants to do is get it back because it was stolen from his grandmother fifty years ago. That regalia symbolizes his family that is why it is so important to him, but to the pawn shop owner, it’s just some random dress. Jackson knew it was his family’s regalia because his “family always sewed one yellow bead somewhere” on the regalia. The pawn shop owner said he bought it for $1000 dollars and he wasn’t going to give it to him for free so he gave Jackson 24 hrs to find $1000. He gave him $20 to help get him to get started with finding the money. The pawn shop owner knew that he wasn’t going to save the twenty dollars, he knew that Jackson was going to waste all his money on alcohol. Jackson has all these friends that kept giving him money because they felt bad for him. The police officer gave him $30 and said: “I believe you’ll take my money and get drunk on it.” The policeman was right. Jackson tries so hard to make money to pay for the regalia because it symbolizes his family but no matter how hard he tries, he’ll just keep spending the money he earns or the money that people keep give him because he is not used to having money to spend. He wanted to win back the regalia he could have just gone to the police and reported it stolen to get it back, in the beginning, but he didn’t. Instead, he goes back to the pawnshop after the 24hrs are up, with $5 that he worked hard for. Jackson didn’t believe he deserved to have the regalia but the pawnshop owner said “you did win it. Now take it before I change my mind.” Jackson was overwhelmed he finally had a part of his family back in his life.

Sylvia and the rest of the poor, uneducated lower class city kids in the story The Lesson by Toni Cade Bambara, is brought to a toy story by Miss. Moore. A teacher who felt that it was her duty to help unprivileged kids learn about where they are on the social ladder. She brings the kids to a toy store far from the neighborhood. The toy store has many expensive toys/items that symbolized the fact that wealth is not equally distributed and hard work can one day earn the kids great things Sylvia doesn’t understand the point of buying a paperweight that cost so much because while there are people that can afford expensive paperweights there are others that can’t even afford a desk. The other kids discover a sailboat in the window. The sailboat symbolizes freedom and the journeys that lie in front of the kids. Sylvie, like the other kids, don’t understand why the boat cost $1195 when “you can buy a sailboat set for a quarter at Pop’s?”. The rich and the poor live completely different lives. What type of society is it “when some people can spend on a toy what it would cost to feed a family of six or seven.” Money doesn’t affect people. Yes, rich people can buy whatever they want because they have the money to. But poor people can also be happy with the amount of money they have. The expensive toy sailboat shows that wealth is not equally distributed and hard work can one day earn people great things.

Jackson and Sylvia aren’t as fortunate as the people around them. They live in poor neighborhoods or don’t even live in a house. Both Jackson and Sylvia really want something that is too expensive. Throughout the story, they learned that wealth is not equally distributed and hard work can one day earn the kids great things. Jackson wants to buy back his grandmother’s Powwow regalia but he can’t afford it, but he still works hard to earn money, same with Sylvia, she is brought to a toy store and finds a toy sailboat that is way out of her price range. The boat is about the cost her family spends on feeding her whole family for a whole year. Jackson and Sylvia live in very different societies compared to the people around them. But it doesn’t stop them from working hard to getting what they want.

Growing up on a Native American Reservation with alcoholic parents, being bullied at school and having severe a health condition, the great writer Sherman Alexie somehow still managed to excel in his literature class and later be awarded a bachelor’s degree from Washington State University. However, filled with a dark, sharp sense of humor, Alexie’s work is still a subtle reflection of his youth. Written in 2003 and published by The New Yorker, “What you pawn I will redeem” is a slightly amusing yet insightful story in which Jackson Jackson, a homeless Spokane Indian man, embarks on an adventure to retrieve his grandmother’s regalia. By rendering the regalia as a sacred symbol of the perishing culture and Jackson’s journey to regain it as the process of salvaging his stray heritage, Alexie Sherman expresses the utmost importance of cultural property, to the Native American as an individual and to mankind as a whole.

Jackson’s acknowledgment that his grandmother’s lost regalia is now in possession of a white man and his determination to take up the quest of retrieving it metaphorically illustrate the tragic removal of Indian tribes from their traditional, ancestral land and their strong desire for having it back. Indeed, Jackson sees his deceased grandmother’s regalia in a pawnshop and he is almost immediately certain of it since “there will be one yellow bead hidden somewhere on it”. The pawnbroker then gives him “a crisp twenty-dollar bill” as a start of Jackson’s journey when he walks “out into the daylight to search for nine hundred and seventy-four more dollars”. According to Jackson and his friends, the loss of the regalia is “his family’s sad story”. Similarly, in the history of Indian, “removal was a tragedy as thousands of people were forced to leave behind their homes, livestock, crops, and places that had spiritual significance for them. The final removal came under the Indian Removal Act signed in September of 1830. Their travels were marked by outbreaks of cholera, inadequate supplies, bitter cold, and death from starvation and exhaustion”. Looking at the regalia, Jackson is now aware of a desire other than his usual thirst for alcohol. As a homeless man, he knows perfectly well that his chances to gain the enough money are slim. Thus, the future of his grandmother’s regalia, a tangible representation of his Indian culture, is unascertained. Plus, despite being sold for $999, the regalia has no real value to Jackson. However, its personal value alone is enough for Jackson to disregard all the uncertainties and the odds against him. His own name “Jackson” and the “crisp twenty-dollar bill” given by the “old white man” are also significant examples of symbolism in the story. Readers’ attention is called to the irony of the particular monetary denomination with President Andrew Jackson’s portrait on the front. The very name of the protagonist, again, forcefully reminds readers of the man who signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830 that brought nothing but sadness and misery to countless Indians, Jackson. White settlers perceive Indian life to be a roadblock to the development of the New World and consider their removal as the rightful course of action. “Trails of tears” were left as the Indian tribes are evicted from their natural landscape, and maybe, as the regalia was stolen from Jackson’s family.

The long arduous journey to regain the regalia and all obstacles, incidents, decisions that come with it further emphasizes the cultural significance of the dress and shows how meaningful this traditional attire is to Jackson. Jackson and his pals spend the money from the pawnshop owner on “three bottles of imagination” and end up passing out in an alley. When Jackson scrapes together another two dollars and fifty cents, he spends it on lottery tickets and miraculously wins one hundred dollars. But then he takes the money and buys round after round of shots for everyone in an Indian bar: “Me and all my cousins here are going to be drinking eighty shots.” Additionally, knowing about the stolen regalia, “the Big Boss” at Real Change tells him: “We should call the police” and Officer Williams says he will investigate the case himself. However, Jackson refuses both: “I don’t want to do that. It’s a quest now. I need to win it back by myself”. As the hours slip by, Jackson squanders his time and money – and perhaps any chance of redeeming his grandmother’s regalia. Clearly, the most prominent Indian stereotype – the ‘alcoholic Indian’ now hinders Jackson in his effort to reclaim his cultural legacy. Sherman Alexie, as a man who spent all his childhood with alcoholic Native American parents, accentuates this stereotype throughout the story. If not for heavy drinking habits, Jackson may not have become homeless and might have had an easier time recovering his grandmother’s lost regalia. With this example of symbolism, readers may wonder that without problematic substance use, may those Indians who are living below the poverty line, homeless and unemployed, have had a better chance in the contemporary world? However, regardless of how impossible it may be for him to raise $999 in one day, he is not one who cowers away from the fight. Twice in the story, third parties recommend that he could get the regalia back by reporting it to the police, but Jackson just turns a deaf ear to such suggestions: “I need to win it back by myself”. It is a positive element of the story that Jackson acknowledges the importance of heritage and ancestry by acknowledging that he can still choose to pursue a selfdirected goal.

At the mystically beautiful ending, as Jackson regains his grandmother’s regalia, puts it on and dances amid a frozen city, he successfully reclaims his heritage, even if for just one moment in time, thereby revealing an affirmation of goodness and humanity. At the very touching end of the story, Jackson finally recovers the regalia and he is, indeed, overcome with joy: “Outside, I wrapped myself in my grandmother’s regalia and breathed her in. I stepped off the sidewalk and into the intersection. Pedestrians stopped. Cars stopped. The city stopped. They all watched me dance with my grandmother. I was my grandmother, dancing”. According to the book “Children of the sun”, “there is, in fact, at least one dance group in almost every village, and some villages have more than one. They sing traditional songs and perform traditional dances. They also make and buy dancing regalia, which consists of button blankets (blue and red felt blankets embroidered with pearl-colored buttons in the shapes of traditional animal motifs), carved and woven hats, armband, carved knives, necklaces, and other jewelry.” Furthermore, according to the Meriam-Webster dictionary, “powwow” is “an American Indian ceremony (as for victory in war) or an American Indian social gathering or fair usually including competitive dancing” (Meriam-Webster). The dance is axiomatically the connection between Jackson and his ancestors. Jackson’s supernatural bond to his grandmother – “I was my grandmother, dancing” – demonstrates how he deeply values the regalia, the symbol of his culture because the very act of dancing is an Indian traditional expression of emotion. The regalia would have been worn during the Winter Spirit Dance, which was considered essential to the spiritual health of both the tribe and the individual. This brings final significance to the regalia – perhaps when he dances in it, he might fulfill the quest of his family, bring him spiritual wellness and honor his grandmother.

Following Jackson on his profoundly emotional journey, the reader could not help but marvel at the light Alexie Sherman sheds on the Native American’s life and how they genuinely worship their vanishing tradition. The regalia and everything revolves around it: Jackson, his adventure, etc. manifest one main theme which echoes down the ages: cultural heritage is spiritually imperative to humanity. This analysis has not considered Jackson’s interesting encounters with white people, which evoke a long, complicated relationship between Native peoples and white settlers. Such aspect might demonstrate how Alexie demolishes the preconceived notions and opinions of Indians about white people by showing that not all of them are evil people as some Indians may perceive them as.