Themes and morals

The moral in the story "What You Pawn I Will Redeem" is that when one works hard toward a goal, he or she will succeed, even if the outcome is not as expected. The protagonist goes on a long search for money to buy the regalia, leading to Jackson eventually being given the regalia even though he doesn’t have all the money he needs. However, this is not a theme of the story. A major theme in this piece is that of loss; the reader learns that Jackson Jackson lost his grandmother and grandfather before the beginning of the story, and throughout the narrative the reader is told about the disappearances of minor characters such as Junior, the three Aleuts, and several others. Their deaths are not expanded upon, and are merely stated and then forgotten, such as in this line: “I heard later that [Junior] had hitchhiked down to Portland, Oregon, and died of exposure in an alley behind the Hilton Hotel” (Alexie, 37). While both the theme and the moral are important aspects of the story, they are not synonymous. The moral is generally short and somewhat straightforward, a message about how to go about life. Themes, meanwhile, explore less obvious characteristics of the narrative, subtle but powerful facets of the story that give the story a quality of depth.