The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Content Warning: This section references racism, genocide, alcohol addiction, violence, incarceration, and end-stage cancer.

Victor is the protagonist of at least 11 of the collection’s 24 short stories. His name is the first one readers encounter, and his presence—whether as a child, a young adult, or somewhere in between—pervades and grounds the work as a whole.

Victor typifies Alexie’s vision of the contemporary young Indigenous man. He is sensitive, impulsive, and confrontational—a combination of traits that slate him as an antihero. His point of view illuminates many of the traumas associated with life on the reservation: poverty, violence, alcohol addiction, political oppression, cultural loss, and tribal disconnection. Although Victor internalizes these harsh realities, he seeks to find meaning in them without staying victimized by them. His internal conflict lies in Cultural Belonging and Isolation: determining the extent to which he can fashion a personal identity within his tribe. He longs to be the ideal, the warrior, and (as his name suggests) the victor, but he feels doomed to powerlessness. He bemoans not having a testing ground for his manhood, remarking, “my generation of Indian boys ain’t ever had no real war to fight” (28).