Despite its straightforward plotline, “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” is in some ways a difficult story to categorize. Jackson is a matter-of-fact, unsentimental narrator, and the story doesn’t shy away from difficult topics, as when Alexie describes Junior “passed out [...] covered in his own vomit, or maybe somebody else’s vomit” (Part 3, Paragraph 2). At the same time, an air of mystery or magic surrounds several of the story’s key events and figures, and the underlying plot structure echoes the quest narratives common to folklore and mythology worldwide. Jackson himself highlights these parallels, saying at one point, “I want to win [the regalia] back like a knight” (Part 15, Paragraph 74).

This combination of realism and romance in part reflects the allegorical nature of much of the story’s action. While it’s possible to take Jackson’s quest to recover his grandmother’s regalia at face value, his journey calls to mind a much broader story about the ways in which indigenous peoples have responded to and been impacted by the European colonization of the Americas. Jackson’s homelessness, for instance, is heavily symbolic; he lives close to the lands his ancestors once inhabited but that they were largely dispossessed of as a result of the United States’ westward expansion throughout the 19th century.