Looking at Alexie's "Because My Father..."

Sherman Alexie really knows how to create an interesting, although rather awkward at times, piece of writing. The reading that I’m getting at here is “Because My Father…” Reasons for why I loved this reading so much are because there were several distinctive parts in the reading, and there’s one prominent theme that I feel like Alexie really knows how to get across to his readers.

First, I loved the third paragraph of the story. Already, Alexie drew me into his story while writing about the irony with his father’s “Make Love Not War” picture, which was very comical to read. I especially liked one of the captions for the picture created by some editor: “Demonstrator Goes to War for Peace.”

The second part of the story that I thought was excellently written, although rather uncomfortable to read, was when Alexie wrote about how he was “conceived during one of those drunken nights, half of me formed by my father’s whiskey sperm, the other half formed by my mother’s vodka egg.” After getting over the initial shock of the paragraph beforehand, talking about how the father would sometimes pass out during the “middle of it,” I thought to myself how well-written that passage was. The creativity that Alexie brims with really shines here because who would ever think to write about being formed by a drunk sperm and egg?

Finally, one of the last reasons why I loved reading this story was because Alexie really presents readers with the theme of having a close connection to your parents. Now, many stories have this sort of generic theme; however, Alexie really goes the distance with it because he shows this family connection in very… strange ways.

For instance on page. 26, Alexie writes about how Victor would perform a type of “ceremony” where he would wait all night for his father to return home from drinking. Then Victor would wait for him to pass out on the kitchen table, and finally he would fall asleep under the table with his head near his father’s feet so they could “dream together until the sun came up.” It’s really odd passages like this that make the story mesh together really nicely because they show a clear relationship between Victor and his parents. I won’t get into the part though where Victor talks about listening and falling asleep to his parents’ lovemaking; although, I guess I just did. X.x

In the end, Sherman Alexie has really created an awesome piece of writing with “Because my Father…” through his clever use of writing very unique passages. And after getting over the intensely awkward feeling of some of the paragraphs in the story, you can really begin to realize why Alexie put them in there, which I believe was to tie the story together with an unusual family theme.