Indian Killer

Indian Killer was a very captivating book and I found myself unable to put it down. From the opening the story had me hook and wanting to know more about John Smith. I wanted to know where his life was going and where he came from. We have an infant Indian boy being adopted by a white, seemingly upper-middle class, couple in Washington. From his young childhood to his adult years he knew he did not fit in the white man’s culture. The loss of Father Duncan made things even worse for him. I believed he battled with conflicts with whom he was and where he belonged. In today society many of the young adults have difficulties dealing with the same issues and they have lashed out and became rebellious. Then there are those like John Smith who repress their emotion until it becomes overwhelming. They do not seek help and become isolated and do not speak to anyone. When they reach that peak they violently react toward themselves and/or others. There is however a story behind the story and that is the conflict between the white man and the Indians. This has been going since the white man first set foot on this land. Our government’s greed for land and the white man’s need for money forced Indians onto reservations. But once valuable natural resources were found on the reservation the government drove them onto even smaller reservations. Those who would refuse to leave were simply killed. And those who moved to the small land provided suffered because of lack of food or medical treatment. Sadly there is not a whole lot that we can do in this generation other than apologies and hope that they would not look bad upon some of us that appreciate there heritage. As the book ended it left me wondering who the killer was. Sherman Alexie in my opinion left the book to open for my taste. I still want to know who the killer was and what tribe John Smith was from. The reason is I do not believe that neither John nor Reggie was the killer.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Where do I begin with this interesting and thrilling book? As I read this book it reminded me of all the adventures I had in my life. In the opening Hunter S. Thompson describe all the narcotics and alcohol they were taking on their journey to find the American dream. I recalled the countless trips my friends and I took to the outer banks of North Carolina. We would get a wild hair and load up the car with booze we bought on base and head out. Once we got there we partied the whole weekend and cruise back to Norfolk just in time for morning muster on Monday. Barely able to stand we somehow managed to not get into trouble for the most part. On rare occasions’ one of us would fallout and the s#*t would hit the fan. Naturally I was into this book from the beginning. The essence of paranoia Thompson had brought back memories of my shipmates wait for the results from our random drug test and from times we came back to the ship three sometimes four sheets to the wind. Hoping that the Officer of the Deck would not catch us in our drunken stupor. That fear was enough to make us sober long enough to get past them and make it to our berthing (place where we slept on board the ship). All in all I really enjoyed this book and that is shocking for me because I don’t like to read a lot.

American Dream

A nice house, good job, a car and a family all of these are examples of what an American dream can consist of. For many people it can be very different and at the same time very similar. We are all unique individual who have very different standards that govern our lives. To pick out the American dream, well is impossible. I can only say what my American dream is which just happens to being involved in something greater than myself.