49 pages • 1 hour read
Sherman AlexieWhat You Pawn I Will Redeem
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Quiz
Reading Check, Multiple Choice & Short Answer Quizzes
Reading Check questions are designed for in-class review on key plot points or for quick verbal or written assessments. Multiple Choice and Short Answer Quizzes create ideal summative assessments, and collectively function to convey a sense of the work’s tone and themes.
Reading Check
1. Where does Jackson live?
2. What “flaw” does Jackson identify to prove the regalia was his grandmother’s?
3. What deal does the pawnbroker make with Jackson?
4. How did Jackson’s grandmother die?
5. What is the name of the non-profit that supplies Jackson with newspapers to sell?
6. To whom does Jackson give the first $20 of his lottery winnings?
7. What are the names of the people Jackson meets at Big Heart’s bar?
8. Where does Officer Williams find Jackson sleeping?
9. What does Jackson do with the majority of the $30 that Officer Williams gives him?
10. How much money does Jackson have when he returns to the pawnshop?
Multiple Choice
1. Which of the following best describes Jackson’s tone as a narrator?
A) proud
B) naive
C) bitter
D) ironic
2. Jackson’s name most likely alludes to which of the following figures?
A) Andrew Jackson
B) Jackson Pollock
C) Michael Jackson
D) Jesse Jackson
3. Which of the following passages hints at a supernatural force at work in the story?
A) “Piece by piece, I disappeared. I’ve been disappearing ever since” (Part 1, Paragraph 2)
B) “[W]e walked past this pawnshop I’d never noticed before” (Part 1, Paragraph 6)
C) “I love the smell of ocean water. Salt always smells like memory” (Part 3, Paragraph 2)
D) “When I got to the wharf, I ran into three Aleut cousins” (Part 3, Paragraph 3)
4. The Aleuts who sit on the wharf most strongly represent which of the following?
A) the transactional nature of US culture
B) the exploitation of Indigenous Americans
C) the longing to return to a vanished past
D) the possibility of personal redemption
5. Jackson resists going to the police about the regalia for all but which of the following reasons?
A) He isn’t entirely sure the regalia was his grandmother’s.
B) He thinks it would be unfair to the pawnshop owner.
C) He realizes the legal system is unlikely to help him.
D) He wants to prove himself by raising the money.
6. Which of the following best describes the significance of the passage, “And we drank our whiskey shots until they were gone. But the other Indians bought me more whiskey shots, because I’d been so generous with my money” (Part 10, Paragraph 35)?
A) It implies that Jackson is more strategic than he appears.
B) It underscores Jackson’s struggle with alcohol dependency.
C) It illustrates a non-capitalist notion of economy and value.
D) It reflects the characters’ alienation from their history.
7. Jackson’s remark, “The two funniest tribes I've ever been around are Indians and Jews, so I guess that says something about the inherent humor of genocide” (Part 15, Paragraph 28), is an example of which of the following?
A) comic relief
B) oxymoron
C) non sequitur
D) black humor
8. Which of the following best explains why Officer Williams decides to lend Jackson money?
A) He believes Jackson will put the money to good use.
B) He understands that Jackson needs to try to win back the regalia.
C) He feels sorry for Jackson after hearing about his grandfather.
D) He thinks it is the easiest way to get Jackson to leave.
9. Which of the following best describes the significance of the ocean as a motif?
A) Its cyclical rhythms evoke femininity and connect it to Jackson’s grandmother.
B) It is a place where things vanish, but it also represents the possibility of return.
C) Its openness represents freedom, but it is also unpredictable and dangerous.
D) It is the object of many of Jackson’s family stories and ancestral beliefs.
10. How does Jackson feel as he leaves with his grandmother’s regalia?
A) victorious
B) fortunate
C) content
D) transformed
Short-Answer Response
Answer each of the following questions in a complete sentence or sentences. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. What does Jackson mean when he says he’s “an effective homeless man” (Part 1, Paragraph 3)?
2. How does Jackson describe Junior’s physical appearance?
3. What does the deal the pawnbroker initially offers Jackson suggest about the way US legal and economic systems have interacted with Indigenous Americans?
4. What did Jackson’s father believe caused his mother’s (Jackson’s grandmother’s) cancer? How does this compare to Jackson’s theory?
5. Why does Jackson share his lottery winnings with Mary?
6. In the story Jackson tells about his grandfather, how did his great-uncle respond to having killed his brother? Why?
7. What do the Aleuts mean when they tell Jackson, “Every song […] is about [wishing their grandmothers were still alive]” (Part 16, Paragraph 15)?
8. What happens to the Aleuts and why is that significant?
9. In what sense did Jackson “work hard” for the $5 he ultimately shows to the pawnbroker?
10. Why does Jackson see himself in the yellow bead?
Quizzes – Answer Key
Chapters 1-5
Reading Check
1. Seattle
2. a yellow bead (stitched into the armpit)
3. He gives him 24 hours to raise $999—$1 less than the pawnbroker paid for it.
4. breast cancer
5. Real Change
6. Mary, the daughter of the grocery store owners
7. Irene Muse and Honey Boy
8. on the railroad tracks
9. He uses $25 to buy breakfast for himself and the Aleuts.
10. $5
Multiple Choice
1. D (Parts 1-19)
2. A (Part 1, Paragraphs 35-39)
3. B (Part 1, Paragraph 6)
4. C (Part 3, Paragraphs 3-7; Part 16, Paragraphs 1-17; Part 19, Paragraph 1)
5. A (Part 1, Paragraphs 29-32; Part 5, Paragraphs 11-12; Part 15, Paragraph 74)
6. C (Part 10, Paragraph 35)
7. D (Part 15, Paragraph 28)
8. B (Part 15, Paragraph 80)
9. B (Part 3, Paragraphs 2-7; Part 16, Paragraphs 1-17; Part 19, Paragraphs 1-2)
10. D (Part 19, Paragraph 30)
Short-Answer Response
1. Jackson suggests that being homeless requires a particular skill set—for instance, “know[ing] where to get the best free food” (Part 1, Paragraph 3). The fact that Jackson views homelessness as a kind of job helps establish the story’s critique of capitalist notions of value.
2. Jackson describes Junior as unusually handsome. This is partly thanks to his prominent cheekbones, which Jackson suggests resemble those of the “Before Columbus Arrived Indian” (Part 1, Paragraph 5)—a caricature that is itself intertwined with colonialism.
3. The “deal” the pawnbroker offers knocks only $1 off the price he himself paid for the regalia and still far surpasses Jackson’s means; in other words, it isn’t really a deal at all. Although the pawnbroker recognizes that the regalia rightfully belongs to Jackson, he initially says he can’t afford to swallow the loss, implying that the US legal and economic systems simply aren’t equipped to deal justly with Indigenous Americans.
4. Jackson’s father believed the uranium mine on the reservation caused his mother’s cancer. Jackson suggests that his grandmother’s cancer instead resulted from the theft of her regalia: “Maybe the cancer started in her broken heart and then leaked out into her breasts” (Part 4, Paragraph 3). Although Jackson’s explanation is more metaphorical, both theories emphasize Indigenous Americans’ struggle to survive and preserve their cultures in an often-hostile environment.
5. Jackson shares his lottery winnings with Mary because he sees her as family: “It’s tribal. It’s an Indian thing. When you win, you’re supposed to share with your family” (Part 8, Paragraph 27).
6. Jackson says his great-uncle didn’t know why he committed the murder and spent the rest of his life writing about it in an attempt to understand his motives. The anecdote suggests that we tell stories to try to salvage something from loss or trauma—in this case, the great-uncle's complicity in the destruction of his own people.
7. Separated as they are from their homes, family, and heritage, the Aleuts see all of their songs as expressions of what they have lost—metaphorically, their grandmothers.
8. The Aleuts walk into (or perhaps on) the ocean and head northward; whether they drown or walk all the way to the Aleutian Islands is unclear. This ambiguity adds an element of the supernatural to the story and also avoids definitively answering whether it’s possible to regain a vanished past.
9. In addition to traveling around Seattle, Jackson engages with multiple people over the course of the story, often in ways that highlight his generosity: He describes everyone from Mary to the strangers at the bar as “family” and shares whatever money he’s earned with them. The story suggests that this forging and reinforcement of interpersonal bonds is a kind of work.
10. The yellow bead is a flaw that nevertheless constitutes an important part of a whole. In comparing himself to the bead, Jackson suggests that a greater whole—his heritage, or perhaps a transcendent spiritual reality—has subsumed and redeemed his own flaws.
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