49 pages • 1 hour read
Sherman AlexieWhat You Pawn I Will Redeem
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Vanishing Native American History and Identity
Native American history in the United States is not simply one of racial marginalization or oppression, but also one of mass death and cultural erasure. Jackson describes it as one of genocide, which is a view many experts today would agree with; although introduced diseases like smallpox undoubtedly played a role in the decline of indigenous populations following European colonization, a number of concrete steps were also taken to kill or displace native peoples as well as to stamp out their cultural identities and practices.
“What You Pawn I Will Redeem” is in some sense an allegory for this process of erasure. Most of the indigenous characters who appear in the story ultimately vanish without a trace: Rose of Sharon leaves while Jackson is sleeping, Junior wanders off while Jackson is buying lottery tickets, and the Aleuts disappear into the ocean. Furthermore, the story’s plot centers on an object—the ceremonial regalia—that symbolizes the disappearance of Native American lands, cultures, and peoples. Significantly, this item was stolen from Jackson’s grandmother in an act he implies was also a kind of murder: “I wondered if my grandmother’s cancer started when someone stole her powwow regalia. Maybe the cancer started in her broken heart and then leaked out into her breasts” (Part 4, Paragraph 3).
The legacy of this kind of literal and figurative ethnic cleansing is also a central concern of Alexie’s story. Jackson is homeless not just materially but also culturally, in that he has few ties to traditional Spokane beliefs and practices; as he notes regretfully, he never even had the chance to see his grandmother dance in her regalia. In fact, his very name—Jackson Jackson—is a testament to his alienation from his heritage; the lack of a distinct surname undercuts any sense of family lineage, while the name itself recalls Andrew Jackson, the 19th-century president who famously presided over the forced relocation of tribes like the Cherokee and Seminole during the Trail of Tears. As Alexie suggests, this erasure is not simply a thing of the past. Figures like Jackson live on the edges of society where they are easily overlooked, and when they finally are noticed, they tend to be subsumed into stereotypes. As Jackson puts it: “Homeless Indians are everywhere in Seattle. We’re common and boring, and you walk right by us, with maybe a look of anger or disgust or even sadness at the terrible fate of the noble savage” (Part 1, Paragraph 4).
Given all of this, it is perhaps not surprising that Jackson at times participates in his own disappearance or self-destruction via heavy drinking; as he tells Officer Williams, “I’ve been killing myself ever since [my grandmother] died” (Part 15, Paragraph 13). Nevertheless, the fact that Jackson finally succeeds in recovering the regalia is significant and suggests that the disappearance of Native American cultures and peoples can in some sense be reversed or undone.
Different Visions of Economy
As its title suggests, “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” is deeply interested in questions of buying, selling, and ownership. Most of the interactions in the story involve the exchanging of money and goods, and the plot as a whole centers on Jackson’s attempts to raise enough cash to buy his grandmother’s stolen regalia. Strictly speaking, Jackson fails to do this, in that he’s unable to earn the amount necessary to recoup the pawnbroker for the thousand dollars he spent buying the garment. Nevertheless, the pawnbroker decides to give Jackson the regalia for $5, telling him that he’s earned it through his actions.
To understand this theme, it’s helpful to consider the story’s cultural and historical backdrop. Although economic systems obviously varied from region to region and tribe to tribe, indigenous American groups did not, broadly speaking, adhere to anything like modern Western capitalism prior to European colonization. In fact, this system was in some cases forcibly imposed on native peoples; the 1887 Dawes Act, for example, sought to break up tribes’ communal lands into lots that would be owned by individuals or families. In other words, the kind of economic system that Alexie’s story depicts is one that Jackson is not so much a participant in as a victim of; its emphasis on things like private property, market value, and the accumulation of interest has supplanted the more communal values that often guided indigenous economies.
Within this context, Jackson’s behavior over the course of the story takes on new significance. Jackson repeatedly wins, earns, or is loaned money only to immediately spend it—something that the prevailing economic wisdom would likely deem irresponsible or self-destructive. By and large, however, what Jackson spends his earnings on is food and drink for others: shots for his “cousins” at Big Heart’s, a generous breakfast for the Aleuts, etc. This generosity is in part a matter of cultural identity to Jackson, as he tells Mary while insisting that she take a portion of his lottery winnings: “[I]t’s tribal. It’s an Indian thing. When you win, you’re supposed to share with your family” (Part 8, Paragraph 27). Since Jackson is the frequent recipient of others’ generosity (the free newspapers from the Big Boss, the loan from Officer Williams), he spends the majority of the story not saving what he’s been given but extending his fortune to others.
In this way, the story critiques a strictly transactional notion of value. Although Jackson’s efforts do not succeed in netting him the amount the regalia was initially sold for, they accumulate a value over and above their monetary price, which the pawnbroker recognizes when he assures Jackson that he did in fact “win” the regalia. This ending casts the story’s title in a new light, as what initially seems like a reference to paying accrued interest on a pawned item (i.e. “redeeming” it) turns out to refer to a kind of moral interest generated by acts of generosity.
The Possibility of Redemption and Rebirth
The idea of redemption is central to Alexie’s story, even appearing in the work’s title. At the most literal level, the reference is to the way a pawnshop operates: The person who pawns an item to a broker pays interest when and if they’re able to buy back, or “redeem,” the object. However, the way in which the story approaches economic issues has broader symbolic and moral significance, and redemption is no exception; the moment when Jackson redeems the regalia offers hope for both personal and cultural rebirth.
Jackson himself makes this point explicit early in the story, when he admits that part of him believes he can bring his grandmother back to life by reclaiming her powwow regalia. Although Jackson quickly dismisses this idea as “crazy,” there’s a sense in which it’s true; to the extent that the regalia symbolizes a vanished culture (or even simply a lost connection to that culture), its retrieval carries with it the possibility of resurrection. The language surrounding the episode underscores this point, with Jackson remarking that the pawnbroker “look[s] a little younger” the second time he visits (Part 19, Paragraph 3), as though the clock has been turned back on the destruction of indigenous peoples and cultures. This idea reaches its culmination in the story’s final sentences, when Jackson experiences such closeness to his grandmother that it’s as if she has been reborn in him: “I was my grandmother, dancing” (Part 19, Paragraph 30).
The moment is also one of personal redemption for Jackson, whose life has been defined not only by cultural alienation, but also by mental illness, alcoholism, and failed marriages. In putting on his grandmother’s regalia, Jackson feels that he has become part of a broader spiritual and cultural whole, but also that his very flaws themselves are integral to that whole; he likens himself to the yellow bead his family sewed into every garment as a purposeful flaw and reminder of God’s perfection. The suggestion, then, is not simply that this experience of transcendence and renewal is possible, but that it actually grows out of pain, loss, and imperfection. Jackson’s response to Officer Williams questioning why he “laugh[s] so much” makes a similar point (Part 15, Paragraph 27): According to Jackson, those cultures and races that have suffered the most are quickest to joke, not so much to dismiss their suffering as to convert it to something better.
It is significant that the story itself has such frequent recourse to black humor; the work itself is in some sense an exercise in turning bad to good. The references to myth and legend function similarly, suggesting that the possibility of romance or idealism pervades what might seem like grim reality and that the role of art is to “redeem” that reality by transforming it into something beautiful.
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