Essay on Surviving Against the Odds

The article is mainly challenging is to make sure to survive against all the odds; to try and do our best to stay alive even though everyone wants and expects us to accept to die. The writer of this article is an Indian who grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. The people who lived here were poor, miserable, hopeless and desperate. Their hope to have better lives in the future was not guaranteed and was a given up dream to them as they faced tribalism and poverty among many other factors whose combination does not guarantee a good happy life in the future.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

The writer, Sherman, however, decides not to live to the expectations of the non-Indians and other defeated Indians. He decided to survive. He chose life. He chose to live and worked towards living. He became his own teacher at an age of three years. He read books, articles, letters, brochures and everything else regardless of the fact that he had not learned how to read! However, through persistence and consistency, he managed to read and to understand. He became wise, informed and hence courageous, determined and arrogant. He was motivated; he was empowered since information is power.

There are many points that we can learn from Shermans article. The first important point to learn is to try everything before giving up. Sherman Alexie was three years old when he learned how to read. He had not gone to school so no teacher had taught him about any letters or vowels or sentences leave alone paragraphs. But with time he was able to read and know about paragraphs and that they had their importance. Even though he did not understand the non-Indian language in what he read, he insisted and was patient and finally he managed. Alexie never gave up on himself, he never let go and that is how he lived; and that is how we all live, though not giving up on us.

The second and important lesson to learn is information is power. When you have the information, you have the answer; you have the understanding, you have an edge, you stand a better ground as compared to a person who does not have any information. Through reading a lot of books, articles and anything that was legible, the writer got informed on how things work, happen, the cause and maybe the results. He was updated and had the answers. He held the power. This is the reason why he was unstoppable in class, regardless of the fact that it was expected of him to be silent, to give in to defeat and act stupid because he was Indian. However, power gives you authority and authority demands respect, it demands room and space to be heard and this is what Sherman had. He was thus unstoppable.

The third important point is, what people say about you or your situation does not matter, what matters is if you believe them and what the action you take. According to Alexie, most of his fellow Indians were beaten dogs, they were already hopeless in their young age. One it could be because their parents told them so, two because of the hardship of trying to succeed without any success, three could be because everyone and everywhere expected them not to succeed, so they embraced those expectations, turned them into facts and lived them. In other words, they believed what the environment said about them, and worse, they did nothing about it. However, Sherman says he refused to fail. He refused to believe that he could not make it. He cared enough to try and frustrate those expectations before making them his reality. He worked hard to be a winner, he read and read and yes his efforts were not in vain. Today he is a famous writer because he refused to give up before he could try. He refused to let others decide for him who he was.

The fourth point is, the power to succeed is in your hands. Nobody can win for you and also nobody can lose for you. Also, nobody can be able to determine your future since no one can live your today and nobody can know how your life will be because no one knows! In other words, you are your tomorrow; you are your own success as you are your own failure. Your today could be how it is, either good or bad which you have no control of, but your tomorrow can be either of the two because of you. Whatever we do today determines how our tomorrow shall be. We can choose to believe that we are failures like Alexies classmates because others expect so of us, or we can choose to frustrate them by working hard to be anything else but failures.

The fifth point is no situation is permanent. It is common knowledge that situations come and go both hard and simple or happy and sad. Sherman and his family, as well as the Indian community, were poor, hopeless and desperate. But due to working hard, believing in himself and daring to beat all the odds to succeed, Sherman changed the poverty state of his family and the Indian community as a whole. Today the Indians in America do not live in the Reservation like in the past; they are not poor and hopeless. The situation changed. They now have equal opportunities with the non-Indians. They are no longer cowards who were afraid to dare.

In summary, life has its ups and downs. Someone once said the world is unfair, deal with it which is true. The Indians were people able to perform like anyone else but they were denied the chance, but they learned how to deal with it and now they are enjoying their fruits. Life is just like that, it does not always treat you fair as you deserve, however, it does not mean that you accept defeat, it means you fight to get what you deserve, it means you believe in yourself and refuse to give up. Thats how everybody wins.