Arizona

This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona
Throughout the story “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” the author,
Sherman Alexie, uses the omniscient narrator style, mostly in adramatic third-person presentation style intermixing past and present tenses. By using this style and probable empirical evidence, Alexei, fames his story by giving the reader background information in away that makes the story flow smoothly.
Additionally, the author uses a mixture of past and present tenses throughout the story to highlight important background information regarding therelationship between Victor and Thomas Builds-the-Fire. Throughout the story the author gives the reader enough information for form an opinion on how as time passed, their relationship evolved from having aclose friendship to merely becoming acquaintances if at all. In reality, it led me to conclude that Victor was a person that tried to fit in with “society” as is demonstrated by the description oftheir close friendship when they were 10 years old by sharing a bike during a summer and going together to see the fireworks on the 4th of July. By the time they were fifteen and had long stoppedbeing friends (131), Victor gave Thomas a beating for no other reason other than to show off in front of others. By the time they were adults Victor completely avoided Thomas presence just like thetown’s folks (129).
It is very interesting how Alexei develops his characters in this story. Although Victor appears to be a round character already developed at the beginning of the story, it is Thomaswho ends up with a more round character of the two. In other words, Victor’s character remains flat during the story while Thomas’ character evolves during the story changing the reader’s perspectiveabout him. This is easily demonstrated when they are in the plane seated next to a petite white woman whom Thomas engaged in conversation witty conversation and even a little flirtation which...