The short story “War Dances” by Sherman Alexie, uses bugs to help display her to tone towards native Americans. His uses of references to them, with word choice like “vermin”, “cockroaches”, “locust” and “beehive” help convey the overall theme. These references are made to be an open symbol to help direct the reader to how the narrator feels about his situation as a Native American. The narrator makes a connection between himself and the cockroaches on the first page by thinking about what it feels like to die without a tribe. I thought that was interesting how the author had the character point out a connection instead of making the reader do it entirely by him/herself. I thought this story was interesting and intriguing, even though I HATE cockroaches!
I thought this story was a literary fiction piece, because the in depth symbols and characters made in it. (Also in class Ms. Robison mentioned that it was most likely literary because that’s just that kind of class that we’re in.) The characters seemed to be dynamic and have many layers to them.
