Indian Killer Research Paper

Hamed Adeyemi
Mrs. Maqubela
05/4
The Indian Killer as a Religious Symbol

The Indian Killer by Sherman Alexie is a novel about the violence and chaos caused by the destruction of the Native American identity. In the book, Native Americans strive to figure out who they are while violence continues to grow around them. Native Americans are angry with white people because they are tired of being oppressed. Whites are angry with Native Americans because they no longer want them. And in this ferocious, never-ending cycle of anger and violence, the Indian Killer is created. To some people, the Indian killer is an Indian who is killing innocent white people out of revenge. To others, the Indian Killer kills Indians by causing violence against
It is not bound to the limits of the human body or the morality of the human mind. Mark Jones, the white boy that the Indian Killer kidnapped, is the only person to ever have seen the Indian Killer. When Mark looks into the killer’s face, he notices that it “[shimmers] and [changes] like a pond after a rock [has] been tossed into it” (Alexie, 153). When a rock is thrown into a pond, the water shifts and changes according to the force that the rock caused. Likewise, the killer is able to change his form depending on the situation he is in. At one point, Mark describes the Indian killer as being a winged-creature. He says, “I don’t know. Lots of feathers…On the wings…It was the bird that was there…It could fly, I bet…I think it could fly because it had wings” (324). No one can believe that Mark actually believed the killer was a bird. However, Mark sees what the killer wants him to see: an ever-changing, chameleon force. Although it is not restricted to human moral values, the Indian Killer has its own values and is extremely
Even when the killer wants to kidnap Mark from his home, it compares itself to a greater force. “The killer [knows] that the kidnapping of Mark Jones [is] the…first dance of a powerful ceremony that [will] change the world…The world [will] shudder when a white boy [is] sacrificed. A small, helpless boy. The killer, like a Christian plague, [has swept] into the Jones’s house and stolen the first-born son of a white family” (192). Similar to the plague that claimed the lives of all of the first-born sons of the Egyptians and unrighteous Jews, the killer is sent by some higher power and it understands that. Before it goes to kidnap Mark Jones, “[t]he killer [kneels] down beside the bed as if to pray. Then the killer [does] pray” (153). The killer would not pray unless it believes that what it is doing is good. Unlike all of the other violent characters in the book, the Indian Killer is fighting for a more righteous