“What You Pawn I Will Redeem” by Sherman Alexie is about the narrator’s , Jackson Jackson, story about his quest on obtaining $1000 in order to buy his grandmother’s long lost ceremonial regalia. What follows is a tale of Jackson’s tendencies at being irresponsible keeping the money he collected and instead ending up spending it on other things.
While I think that most of us will assume or get the hunch that Jackson is bound to fail on his task, he still ended up getting the regalia back anyway. This is because in the eyes of those around him, he’s a reliable man. His encounter with other people in different situations showed his generous and kind personality, which earned their trust, hence why he was successful in the end. For example, after waking up before Junior, Jackson constantly checked if he was still breathing, making sure his friend is alright. He also didn’t want to bring in the police into the situation about stealing of the regalia, he wanted to work hard for it instead. When Jackson won some money from a scratch lottery ticket, he gave twenty dollars as a small token to the clerk, Mary, saying that “When you win, you’re supposed to share with your family.” He also treated his “new friends” and fellow Indians to drinks and bought breakfast for the Aleuts he met at the wharf. Even though Jackson is in a difficult situation himself, he still acted out of goodness to others. His altruistic gestures was reciprocated with other people aiding him back, like the Big Boss giving him free newspapers to sell, when the police officer chipped in thirty bucks to help and ultimately the pawnbroker offering the regalia at no charge.
As a narrator tho, it is difficult to say if Jackson is a credible one, whether his story is true since its authenticity is quiet questionable. Made up stories tend to make the story teller in a positive image. You could say he is a good story teller tho if it were all just fictional events, like he said, “we Indians are great storytellers and liars and mythmakers”. I guess it entirely up to the readers whether to believe Jackson’s story is genuine as can be.
Jhoanna raises some great points here, and puts these ideas in conversation with some striking and notable passages from “What You Pawn I Will Redeem.”
Since this is a class about fiction, I’m particularly invested in us considering the fictionality of the story, which Jhoanna thinks about in the context of reliability. If this were called non-fiction, would the narrator be more believable? If this were Sherman Alexie’s personal narrative, would we have something different to say about the narrator than what we want to say about his imagined narrator, Jackson Jackson?
To Jhoanna’s point about the narrator checking on his friend to make sure he’s still breathing: yes, but he also steals his friend’s hidden money. How do we make sense of that as we try to determine whether we trust anything Jackson Jackson narrates in the story?
What do we make of the fact that Jackson Jackson had never seen the pawn shop before, and had trouble finding it when he went back? That gave me a sense that it was imagined, rather than real even in the fictional story. Are you familiar with the genre of fiction called magic realism? Is this an instance of some magical wormhole appearing to transport Jackson Jackson to an alternate reality in which he finds a connection back to his family? Even if not actually within the reality of the story, there is a magical feel that we can sense and use to understand the importance of this find for him.