Absurdity and Profound Insight

Sherman Alexie walks a very delicate border between the absurd and the profound in "The Fun House". This is what makes the story so effective. He starts it with a ridiculous image of a fart scaring a mouse so badly that it runs up a woman's leg, and ends it with a heavy, serious image of a woman dancing while she wears the weight of tradition in the form of a hand-made dress. Essentially, after the mouse incident, the ensuing teasing on the part of her husband and son caused her to go to the river and bath naked for some time. This is a kind of spiritual cleansing, and leads to her to reflect on the trials of her life before emerging with an urge to shoulder the weight of tradition in an effort to change things.
This border that exists between absurdity and profound insight is prevalent in a lot of Alexie's other writing in Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. I think that this is because that border is an integral part of reservation life. People on reservations seem to drink an absurd amount of alcohol, and their lives seem so entangled in the past that it seems funny to an outsider. However, the weight of tradition, like the dress in the story, is something that native people carry with great pride. Like the people in "The Fun House" native lives seem to teeter between a great seriousness about their heritage and tradition, and a reckless desire to have fun. At least, that's the impression I got from the book.