Baldwin, Bambara, & Alexie Short Stories: Resilience Despite Prejudice

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Review of Short Story
Understanding the thematic relationship between short stories is essential for anyone. It allows us to better appreciate how pieces of literature across a specific timeline are tied together towards a single theme, context, or motif, among others. This paper will focus on an analysis of various short stories, namely James Baldwin’s Sonny Blues, Tony Cade Bambara’s The Lesson, and Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. In the succeeding sections of this paper, I would initially look at some of the essential elements in each story that is similar in terms of narrative and presentation, among others. Nonetheless, upon reading all of these stories, one of the main similar themes was the idea of resilience among the main characters despite the racial prejudice and discrimination that they faced in society.
Resilience despite Prejudice
One of the telling elements in all of these stories is the presence (if not dominance) of racial bias and prejudice in the plot of their stories. Specifically, this was portrayed by how the authors precisely described the main characters within a larger societal context. For example, in Alexi’s The Lone Ranger, Native Americans were portrayed as laggards, drunkards, and overtly backward compared to the Whites. It was also shown that this prejudice was the reason for the genocide that some colonizers did when they gave the natives blankets that were infected with smallpox. In addition to this, the background context of Sonny’s Blues also emphasizes the effect of racial bias on the level of the system (Wright). Notably, a reading from the story shows that the narrator has identified that African Americans have significantly fewer opportunities than Whites because of the systemic racism that existed during those times. Finally, however, I realized that Bambara’s The Lesson synthesizes all of these by showing that one of the most obvious signs of racial oppression, whether for African Americans or Native Americans, was the socioeconomic differences they face in the stories (Wright).
As a result of the racial bias and prejudice against minorities, another common element among these stories is the specific hardships that the main characters experienced within the story. For one, the story of Tonto in the Lone Ranger shows that he experienced genocide, discrimination, and even violence by being a part of the Comanche tribe (Barkved). There was even an instance when he was kept close by a White to be used as a fall guy for his plan to kill his friend, knowing that it was easier for society to accept the ‘barbaric’ nature of the native Americans. Accordingly, although separated by chronological context, these personal challenges that the protagonists faced due to racial bias were also present in Sonny’s Blues. Specifically, Sonny became addicted to drugs, vices, and other harmful substances because of the environment that they were living in. This was contextually related to his perception that no matter what he does, he cannot break open the ‘ceilings’ that severely constrict the opportunities that Blacks and other minorit...