Meaning of Otherness
Why does it happen that a person in our modern open society still feels alone and alien? The first reason is that you feel that people who surround you cannot understand you.
Thus, you retreat in yourself. It is a very dangerous condition because the others do not know that you need help. However, you are afraid to reveal your emotions to the society because you think that people will treat you as a social outcast. You understand your otherness and try to hide it under a mask of normality.
However, pretending to be someone will not help you to live a normal life. Many people feel the same in some extend. The second reason is when society makes a person to be an alien and exclude him/her. People do not even want to help in this case because they are not eager to understand someone who is different.
People are proud to announce that everyone is unique, that’s why the society should appreciate each one’s individuality and personal opinion.
However, these are empty words when it goes about otherness. But there is still a way out of this situation. People should learn empathy. Gines (2003) emphasizes that “Empathy dissolves alienation. The person feels that he is no longer an isolate because someone is able to understand him.” (p. 372). Thus, empathy is a real art that people should master to help to bring piece to this world.
Analysis of Sherman Alexie’s This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona
Readers meet a problem of misunderstanding of an Indian boy, Thomas Builds-the-Fire, on the pages of This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona. No one in the reservation speaks and listens to him because people consider him to be weird. Thomas is always telling different strange stories that frighten people because they are mysterious and often come true.
Everything that Thomas tells is truth, but people do not like such truth. Moreover, they do not want to understand the boy that’s why they decided that it would be easier to consider him mad. Therefore, the boys of the same age, even Victor who once was his friends, are hard on Thomas.
The author represents the otherness as the social problem that should be dissolved. And Victor and Thomas’s ride to Phoenix, Arizona, is the first step to try to understand someone who thinks and feels differently. Sherman Alexie tries to show that it is not a crime to be different. Quite the contrary, it is wonderful when someone can percept this world not as you do it. Thus, he/se can help you to change your world-views and see something that you could not even notice before.
Sherman Alexie’s short story reveals the life in Indian reservation. We get acquainted with Indian society. It is a positive experience because Daniel Grassian (2005) explains that Europeans are used to having some weird stereotypes about Indians that were adopted from the 17th century’s image of the Indian tribes and settlements (p. 8).
He also cites Andrew Macdonald stating that “the very word “Indian” is a conflation of hundreds of tribes, languages, and cultures into one emblematic figure: the Other, the Alien, the generalized Non-European” (Grassian, 2005, p. 8). Thus, I consider a boy, Thomas, who seems to be an outcast in the Indian society to be a personification of all Indians. His unique inner world is a rich cultural heritage of Indians.
Thus, neither Thomas’s stories make this boy be the other, nor the Indian traditions prevent the other people from meeting this culture, but society’s callousness and reluctance to change their world-views.
Explanations of how teacher can notice, identify, and assist a student who experiences otherness
The problem of alienation is a very serious issue in the teacher’s work because it is necessary to see and help the pupil who is in trouble in time. Students may be hard on someone who does not share the common opinion. That’s why, if I were a teacher, I would be very attentive to the students’ relationships with each other.
The negative attitude towards one of the students would be difficult to hide during the lessons, and it will reveal fully during the breaks. It would be better not only to concentrate on my subject solely, but observe the behavior of students as well.
The person who other students make an outcast may be depressed and dispirited because he/she may suffer humiliation and have no one to share his/her feelings and emotions with.
It is very important not to let that student go into his/her shell. The first step will be to organize a private conversation trying to find out the reasons of his/her otherness. However, teacher does not need to put pressure on a student to tell everything at once. I will try to show him/her that I am a friend who he/she can trust and speak to if it is necessary. It should be a student’s decision to interact.
The next step will be to change the relationships between students and make them become more tolerant. The reason of someone’s alienation is not his/her otherness because we all are different, but the others’ unwillingness to understand some person.
According to Mary Mayesky (2011), the creative activities will “encourage students to realize their own uniqueness, as well as recognize and appreciate the uniqueness of the others” (p. 376). That’s why I will encourage students to take part in creative movements that will make them communicate and discover something new about each other.
References
Gines, A. C. (2003). General psychology (2003 ed.). Philippine: Rex Book Store, Inc.
Grassian, D. (2005). Understanding Sherman Alexie. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press.
Mayesky, M. (2011). Creative activities for young children (3rd ed.). Wadsworth: Cengage Learning.