Happy Trails Themes & Motifs

This Study Guide consists of approximately 17 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Happy Trails.

Happy Trails Themes & Motifs

This Study Guide consists of approximately 17 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Happy Trails.
This section contains 1,006 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Happy Trails Study Guide

Inherited/Generational Pain

The primary theme that "Happy Trails" explores is the experience of inherited or generational pain. This concept is a psychological phenomenon in which children or future generations inherit the trauma of those that preceded them. The notion of generational pain usually appears in work about oppressed groups of people whose trauma stems from the actions of their oppressors. In "Happy Trails," Sherman Alexie presents readers with a speaker who is well aware of the trauma he has inherited as a Coeur d'Alene-Native American. "Over the years," he says in the second paragraph, "I've lost two other uncles and three aunts, to cancer, heart disease, and car wrecks. One uncle survives, in Seattle, but I rarely see him. My father died, from diabetes, seven years ago. I've got three cousins in prison, three living in poverty on our reservation, and a beautiful and distant cousin...

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This section contains 1,006 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Happy Trails Study Guide
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