In Sherman Alexie’s “Search Engine” and “What Ever Happened to Frank Snake Church” Alexie juxtaposes two people in order to teach one other lessons about themselves and their lives. However, each short story has very different ways of bringing these two people together and different lessons learned from one another about their identity and their family. “Search Engine” brings out what it means to be “Indian” and what it means to be family through Corliss and Harlan while “What Ever Happened to Frank Snake Church” brings out the what it means to accept yourself and to be okay with the events of life with the characters of Frank and Preacher. Though both stories use the same method of bringing two people together to teach one another a lesson about themselves, Alexie takes his readers on different paths to find their identity and how they view themselves. “Search Engine” is more on the deep and darker road to a self-realization that isn’t as bright and happy while “What Ever Happened to Frank Snake Church” is laced with humor and satire of the heavy to get to the finality of being okay.

Sherman Alexie’s “Search Engine” takes readers on through a blip in the life of Corliss who a female Spokane Indian who struggles with who she is, what she’s worth and really what she is doing with her life. She doesn’t know where she belongs and knows that “she wasn’t supposed to be in college and she wasn’t supposed to be as smart as she was” (Alexie 41) all the while not receiving the support she needed from her parents and her tribe. That questioning and persistent personality of hers leads her to Harlan Atwater’s books and evidentially to Harlan Atwater himself. He makes her question herself and how she sees her tribe and her family. He’s a “lost bird” (Alexie 48) but seems to fit in and know what being “Indian” is more than her who’s been a part of the tribe her whole life. She learns more about herself and that she searches for that acceptance she will never get but really she teaches Harlan more about himself than she learns from him. He realizes that the longing to be Indian and to expected lead him to feeling “fake” (Alexie 46) he was being and that the only people who ever made him feel like he was loved and that he belonged were his two white parents.

“What Ever Happened to Frank Snake Church” is a short story plagued by Frank’s need to “reconnect” with his dead parents. Frank Snake Church gave up “something valuable” to honor his mother after she died and brought it back from the dead when his father died. He played basketball in their memory and in vain to be with them again in some way. Through the story Frank deals with the challenges of losing and gaining people, weight and most importantly himself. He goes through stages of grief and mental trauma that eventually leads him to Preacher, a man who would impact his journey in self-realization the most. Preacher looks inside of Frank to show him how foolish he’s being in the way he’s trying to cope and honor his parents but then pretends to that he didn’t look inside and then reveals to Frank that he really isn’t a preacher and that fakeness makes Frank snap. (Alexie 229) Frank Snake Church plays his entire life with humor in order to cope and get to where he needed to be. No matter the situation he used quick humor and a sort of self-deprecation to mask how he was and how he was coping. Through it all he battled a mental illness that’s not named that really he plays less mind to but what it really takes for him to get to the point of self-acceptance is a physical injury while playing basketball. He wrecks his knee and the physical pain that comes with it brings him to accepting that he may never play basketball again and that with life there is always a change that has to come with time and this change would mean he would accept that he would be okay not only with his injury but with his life and himself as a whole.

Both short stories bring readers to the same conclusion of self-acceptance and identity. Through bringing other people into the protagonist’s lives to teach them a lesson, Alexie gives readers to the heart and soul of each character’s journey. He combats his dark and dim in “Search Engine” to “What Ever Happened to Frank Snake Church’s” wit and satire but brings both stories to hard leading end of being okay with their situations and the events that happened in their lives. Corliss and Frank lead very different lives but through the help of Harlan and Preacher learn that life happens how it happens and that being okay with it is the only way to move on okay with life.