There are multiple main ideas one can grasp from the excerpt “Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie. Published in the year 1997, the excerpt is taken from the book “The Most Wonderful Books: Writers on Discovering the Pleasures on Reading”. The author begins the text by introducing the reader to his harsh childhood upbringing where they were considered poor by most standards. As he talks more about his family status, he then transitions his text to his literary idol, his father, who was very fond of books. Alexie then speaks about how his father influenced him to read books and reading influenced his perception and imagination of the world so much that he viewed everything as “paragraphs” and as “images.” He then goes on to talk about how he was discriminated against due to his literacy skills being higher than those of his classmates because Native Americans at that time were seen as “inferior” individuals. He also talks about how resilient he was and that every aspect of his life was influenced by reading; he read almost everything he could find sentences on. He also feels sympathy towards other Native American children because they often have no one to look up to, so he often visits these schools in hopes that his influence can improve someone’s life. The overall idea that I interpreted had two parts: first was that one’s perception of the world and one’s success is made by them alone; second was that their background should not hold them back from achieving their dreams and that literacy can prove to improve that perception and oneself as an individual.
The central idea of the text reveals that Alexie believes in literacy influencing one’s perception and imagination of the world and that one’s background should not hinder them from becoming successful. The central idea can be found in various parts of the text. In the first paragraph, Alexie talks about how he viewed things in the world as “paragraphs” when he first began to understand reading. He also says in the next paragraph that he “imagined” Superman doing his tasks even though he was unable to comprehend, which shows the first part of the thesis because he was the only person who influenced his own perception of the things in the world as “paragraphs.” The second part of the thesis can be proved when Alexie talked about his resiliency on not giving up even when he absolutely had no support from his peers of his own tribe. Alexie reached his target audience through his use of personal experiences of being discriminated against in the hopes that people with the similar experiences may relate to him. He also expects his audience to show resilience as he showed when he was being discriminated against by both his own tribe and others outside his tribe.
