"This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona" by Sherman Alexie

"'Nothing stops, cousin,' Thomas said. 'Nothing stops.'"

As I read through the story, the thoughts that were cropping up in my head culminated in this sentence. I remember thinking things like, "Wow, Thomas is still willing to go so far out of his way for Victor -- friendship never ends!" And then, I got to this line, and realized that that "endless" friendship was quite possibly the whole point of the story. Thomas is the part of this story that strikes the strongest chord with me; he's a dreamer, and fairly spurned by his entire community. They're tired of his stories, so they avoid him and ignore him. But his stories are all he has, so he sticks to his guns and keeps going, and keeps on caring about Victor, because as he says -- nothing stops. 

The reason for the end of Thomas' and Victor's friendship is never explicitly stated, but it's heavily implied that once Victor's friends decided they didn't like Thomas, he followed the crowd and stopped talking to him as well. It doesn't seem to have been of his own accord, because in one of the flashbacks, Victor explicitly asks Thomas to tell him a story, and because they get along so well during their trip. This seems to be making a statement about the power of public opinion on a friendship; although by definition we shouldn't care what others think, many people are strongly influenced by it. And when we're forced to face our own actions, like Victor was, we tend to see the wrong of our ways. "Victor was ashamed of himself.  Whatever happened to the tribal ties, the sense of community?" 

Another section of the story I found interesting was the roadkill when Thomas was driving. They had been commenting on how there were no living things in the desert area when they noticed a jackrabbit. Then, the narrative continues, "Thomas and Victor were busy congratulating themselves on their discovery when the jackrabbit darted out into the road and under the wheels of the pickup." I had trouble working out the meaning of this metaphor for a while -- I could feel that it was an important metaphor to the story, but I couldn't quite put it into words. The jackrabbit could represent a friendship, like the one that once existed peacefully between the younger Thomas and Victor. It was a truly close friendship, seemingly a diamond in the rough. But when the focus was taken away from the relationship itself and shifted onto the objective and social look of it, the friendship was ruined, just like how the jackrabbit was killed when the two men were focused on their pride for having found a living thing in the desert. The focus was on themselves, not the discovery, and by means of that lapse in attention the subject of their excitement was killed. 

As a whole, I found this to be a clever, well-written piece on friendship and family. It manages to be both funny and poignant, and utterly relatable, through Victor's honest self-reflections. It leaves you wanting to be better to the Thomas in your life.