Smoke Signals Analysis

The movie Somke Signals appeared to be about a boy trying to find himself, but there was a lot of symblism and metaphores that gave the movie deeper meaning. The first metaphore that started early on in the movie was the symbol of fire. When Thomas' house burned down when he was a baby, it set up a metaphore where Thomas said "some kids are born from fire and some are born from ash." This is a metaphore for Victor, who is the fire, and Thomas, who is the ash. Victor is viewed as fire because he is a strong and angry all the time. Thomas is considered ash because he is frail and weak. Another metaphore that relates to Thomas being considered ash is the fact that when his house burned down he survived, but his family and his home were gone, which could show that he, metiphorically, burned in that house too and part of him is in those ashes.
Looking at symbols in the movie, basketball seemed to be a very important one. Our first encounter with Victor is him playing basketball, being very aggressive and tough. Throughout the movie basketball games are a recurring theme. Victor's dad tells a story about how they played a very intense game of basketball when Victor was young and becasue of Victor they won in the last minute. This story turned out to be exaggerated, but it was symbolic because it was his dad's way of trying to make amends for all the things he did to his family.

This movie also shares a lot of parallels to Sherman Alexie's novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. One of these parallels is also thy symbol of fire. In both the movie and the book fire kills Thomas' parents and Junior's sister, taking people that were major figures in their lives. The fire's also show a parellel becuase they were both alcohol-related, which seems to be a common theme in Native American literature. Also, in both of them the fires come back to haunt them. In the novel, the fire haunts Junior and keeps causing him to blame himself for his sister's leaving and her death. In the movie, the fire keeps coming back to haunt Arnold Joseph, who accidentally started it during the party. The memory haunts him so badly that it drives him to leave his family and live in a constant state of drunkenness.