Questions about "jesus christ's half-brother is alive and well" by alexie?

Question

This isn’t for school but I just finished reading this story and it confuses me. I would have guessed that the baby would be brain-dead from the number of times that he was dropped on his head. At the end of the story when the baby is talking, do you suppose he really is or that the narrator is just imagining what he would say if he did considering that the author gives us insight that the narrator has become very imaginative as a way of making his life seem more interesting?

And I really don’t understand the relation to the bible for this story except that they call him James but maybe that’s because I know absolutely nothing of religion.

Answer 1

When James talks, he is six or seven years old. He is slow, but no longer a baby. As for whether or not he is actually speaking or whether the narrator just has a great imagination, it is exactly as James 'says,' "everything is a matter of perception" (128). The thing about Alexie is that he writes about reservation life. A lot. He does it with poetic language and images. His images are often immensely exaggerated. Or not. The reservation life of now is a part of the Indian life over the last 500+ years. Things sucked for them then and they still suck now. Whenever you see an Alexie phrase or image that seems confusing, imagine it as a statement on Indian life. The white people keep the Indians down all the time. Alexie brings that to the page in very original ways. Is James talking for real, or is it the narrator's imagination? It's tough. The doctor says it is imagination. If the doctor is white, he may just doubt the narrator, or he may want to crush his hopes. If the doctor is an Indian, his hopes are already gone. But, to the narrator, James is viewed as the Jesus Christ figure. Why? He is hope. He is slow, but he is youth. Youth must be saved to keep the Indians going. Basketball was taken by white people. Everything was taken but small plots of reservations. But having a child is like saying the Indians will keep their race alive. James will "make gold out of commodity cheese" (120) is the narrator's way of saying the youth will keep the Indians alive and maybe someday they will return to the glory they once had. The youth is the Indian miracle worker. The irony of the title is that Jesus is a white people image. Even their hope is a spin-off of white culture. For this reason, I don't think James actually spoke. But maybe the doctor only said the 'imagination' line to break the narrator's hopes. There're many ways to look at it. But it really is a matter of perception. Arguments can be made strongly either way. Alexie is great at metaphor through wild imagery, so take his 'literal' statements with a grain of salt and look for something bigger almost all the time.

Answer 2

Whatever you cookin', I can smell it from here. You shouldn't eat any more of that stuff!

Good sense of humor :-)
Good luck