The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Throughout The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, tension exists between life on and off the reservation.

• How does the tension between the reservation and the city exemplify the theme of Cultural Belonging and Isolation? (topic sentence)
• Analyze how this tension often creates a sense of uncertainty concerning identity, cultural connection, and tradition.
• In your concluding sentences, articulate how Alexie reconciles this tension.

2. Although not every short story centers on Victor Joseph, he is the main narrator of Alexie’s short story collection. Some of the Victor-centric stories are told from Victor’s first-person perspective, while others are told from the third-person perspective.

• How does the presence of both perspectives help support the theme of Storytelling as Creative Agency? (topic sentence)
• Compare and contrast two stories, one that uses Victor’s first-person perspective and another that uses the third person.