Emiley Richardson
Mr. Duncan
English 10 Honors
29 September 2015
Emphasis on Topics
The novel The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-Time Indian and the movie Smoke Signals both originated from the mind of a man named Sherman Alexie. The novel and the movie have some similarities, but each similarity has a subtle difference. Some subtle differences between the topics in the novel The Absolutely True Diary of A Part Time Indian, and the movie Smoke Signals is the emphasis the author puts on each of the topics. There are a few topics that are shown in both the novel and the movie such as racism, identity, and loss. These topics are expressed very strongly in the novel but are vague in the movie.
In the novel racism is a major problem while, in
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the movie it is not. Racism is one of the big problems that Junior faces when trying to find his identity. When Junior moves to Reardan in hopes of finding a way to better himself, he is teased and made fun of because of his Indian heritage. In the novel racism was shown when Junior was harassed by his classmates and teachers at Reardan. Junior tells us about the racist cops that patrol the roads. He says they are racist because the will pull you over just because you are indian and charge you with dwi, “driving while indian”. Yet, in the movie smoke signals the topic of racism is not a big deal at all. It is only really brought up once and that is when Victor and Thomas returned to the bus and white men had taken their seats. The men did not care or even really listen to Victor and Thomas because they were indian. In both the novel and the movie racism divides the Native Americans and the caucasian people. The Native Americans are rounded up and forced to live on reservations. In the novel another big topic is identity, but in the movie it is not expressed very strongly.
In search for his own true identity Junior faces many problems. Junior feels as if he is an outcast on the rez. He has multiple physical impairments, including water on the brain, which causes him to have poor eyesight, seizures, a stutter, and a lisp. Junior also has a intellectual curiosity that is much stronger than most of his classmates or fellow rez members. This makes him an outcast among his own people. When Junior transferred to Reardon he is the only Native American. He is bullied and picked on as he tried to find out where he fit in. While attending Reardan, Junior feels like he has become two separate people. He feels as if he is Junior the indian and Arnold the white boy. Soon Junior realizes that he will never be truly accepted into one tribe or the other. Through this realization Junior is able to understand that he is a part of both tribes not just one. Junior solved his split personality crisis and finds his own unique identity. While in the movie Smoke Signal the topic of identity is not strongly expressed. A way that the characters, Thomas and Victor expressed this is by going out and trying to find their own identities separate from their parents. They set out on their own path and try to find their own identity as an adult. In the novel the topic of identity was more strongly expressed and straightforward that the reader could see and understand it. While, in the movie the audience may struggle to see how it comes into play with the
characters. Loss is a topic that is expressed in both the movie and the novel. In both the novel and movie loss is shown through death. In the movie Victor's dad, Arnold, accidently set fire to Thomas’s home and killed his parents. With this guilt Arnold became depressed and resorted to drinking. Eventually everything caught up to him and he was found dead inside his trailer home. Yet in the novel, The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-Time Indian loss comes in many different forms. The most predominant is death. Junior losses his sister, grandmother, and Eugene. In the novel it is clearly stated that death is a very common thing on the rez. The constant presence of this loss leads to the loss of hope. After losing this hope Junior struggles to regain it throughout the novel. The subtle differences within the topics in the movie Smoke Signals and the novel The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-Time Indian is the emphasis the author puts on each of them. In the novel the topics are more straightforward and expressed very strongly. While, in the movie the audience really has to study the film and grasp the meaning before being able to really understand where the main topics are and how they are expressed.
The characters in both the book and the film have very similar traits-one being passive and the other being aggressive. Both tell a story of a journey that takes them out of their home on the reservation, complete with new experiences, people and finding yourself along the way. True Diary takes place over the course of a school year, in which Junior leaves his school, Wellpinit, a poor Native American school on the reservation to attend Reardan, a middle class white school, twenty miles away from his home. Smoke Signals is a story of Victor and Thomas leaving their reservation to retrieve Arnold´s ashes. Yet, they both return changed from their experiences outside of the
First, Junior confronts the dreariness of the Wellpinit school system by deciding to transfer to the Reardan school system. Junior initiates this decision when he throws a book across the room upon discovering his mother’s name inscribed inside the cover. His outburst signifies Junior’s recognition of Wellpinit’s misery and desire to achieve. This ambition drives his decisions throughout the novel and defines his unique character. In addition, Junior discloses his decision to his parents with fearlessness and trepidation. Junior confesses, “I want to transfer schools... I want to transfer to Reardan” (Alexie 45). Junior’s bluntness highlights his fearless personality and validates his ability to confront his problems and tasks head-on. In complex situations, Junior possesses the skills to navigate his future. Finally, Junior’s ability to overcome problems appears in his ability to navigate his way to Reardan each day for school. With the uncertainty of gas money in his family, Junior often finds himself walking or hitchhiking to the school, however
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself with others”. In stories The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian and Smoke Signals by Sherman Alexie, the main characters struggle with finding themselves. They spend most of the story going on a journey to find who they really are. Both of these stories are very similar, but also have many differences. True Diary and Smoke Signals are similar but different in characters, plot, and theme.
“Alcoholism is an epidemic among Native Americans”(KCTS9). Many people believe that alcoholism is in the Native’s blood, but it is truly just a situational problem. On the reservations a majority of families are poverty ridden, and these families normally stay on the reservation their whole lives. Junior, a 14 year old Spokane Indian, manages to break the cycle of hopelessness and alcoholism in his family by leaving the reservation school to go to the white school in the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Another character that Sherman Alexie brings to life, Arnold, is the typical alcoholic indian stereotype who allows alcohol to affect the course of his life in the movie Smoke Signals. In both Smoke Signals and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, author Sherman Alexie shows how alcohol on the reservation can cause accidents, funerals, and heartache.
Picture yourself in a town where you are underprivileged and sometimes miss a meal. In the novel, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” Sherman Alexie wrote the book to show hardships that Native Americans face today. Alexie shows us hardships such as poverty, alcoholism and education. In the novel, Junior goes against the odds to go to an all white school to get a better education to have a better life
It is said by Jeb Bush that, “Our children can achieve great things when we set high expectations for them”. Well, Arnold (Junior) Spirit in the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, doesn’t have high expectations, if anything he is expected to fail, in life and in school. But Junior has ambition like none other, that is why he decides to break away from his reservation and attend the racist school Reardan. During his time in Reardan and on the Reservation, Junior rises above the life he was expected to live; he demonstrates ambition through perseverance and finds his identity, which proves humans ability to rise above expectations.
Have you ever wanted something really badly, but couldn’t afford it? This is a common occurrence, but what about food? Have you ever went to be hungry because you couldn’t afford to eat? Unfortunately, Junior, the main character in the book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, felt exactly this way for food. Even though Junior didn’t have as many resources as the other “white kids,” he still chose to look at the positives. This novel shows that even in times of great hardship, people can still choose to have hope and look at the good in their lives.
Adolescents experience a developmental journey as they transition from child to adult, and in doing so are faced with many developmental milestones. Physical, cognitive, social and emotional changes are occurring during this tumultuous stage of life, and making sense of one’s self and identity becomes a priority. Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian addresses the challenges of adolescence in an engaging tale, but deals with minority communities and cultures as well.
Everyone struggles with identity at one point in their life. It will eventually happen to everyone. Identity is how people see one another, it is one of the most important things about someone. Identity goes hand in hand with experience. One’s experiences can impact one’s identity. In Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, the main character Arnold, also known as Junior, has many health issues, and notably stands out in the crowd. It does not help that he is a poor Indian boy that lives on a Reservation, and that he decides to go to an all white high school. Many of his experiences at school, and on the Reservation impact his identity. Experience is the most influential factor in shaping a person’s identity because
Throughout the beginning of the book, and into the middle, Junior is trying to establish his intrinsic values to this new community of his. Stereotypes and generalizations have become the easy way to justify the separation of races, classes, and genders. Creating these ideas about the cultures that are different than our own is a dangerous habit that must be broken by this generation so that our children can play in merriment without the fear of being misunderstood on a day-to-day basis. So as Adiche said in her TED talk, stories matter, and to only pay attention to specific stories of one’s life, is to overlook all of the other formative experiences of life. “The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.
The novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, the main protagonist, Arnold Spirit Jr., is a fourteen year old Native American living on a reservation in Spokane, Washington. He attends his high school years at Reardan High School, where he struggles to fit in. His best friend, Rowdy, is also one of Arnold’s main strong influences in his life. This story takes place in modern times, with no specific date given, but it can be implied that it took place in the early 2000s when technology really started to take off. In this novel, the author, Sherman Alexie, emphasizes that finding indentity, caring for family, and overcoming obstacles will lead to a happier life.
The first of Junior’s problems is one he was bullied for since he was a young child. Junior was born with water on the brain, which caused him to have seizures. Not only was he born with brain damage but he was smaller than the rest of the reservation kids, and for this he was greatly picked bullied. The way Junior copes with this particular problem is by hiding from everyone on the reservation. In fact, when he’s at the white school, Reardan, he lets them bully him. Junior writes, “So, weak and poor and scared, I let them call me names while I tried to figure out what to do” (Alexie 64). Eventually
What makes each individual specific is identity and loss of identity which can be harmful. Junior carries around a lot of stress that he is losing his identity because he feels so much pressure from the people on the reservation and from the people in Reardan. Junior says, “traveling between Reardan and Wellpinit, between the little white town and the reservation, I always felt like a stranger. I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other. It was like being Indian was my job, but it was only a part-time job” (118). People at home call Junior an “apple” (132) because they believed that he looks like an Indian but he acts like a white person. He feels this difference too. He considers himself “red on the outside and white on the inside” (132). This contradiction between his feelings brings him a sense of loss of identity which makes him assimilate and redefine himself over and over again. Discovering new opportunities and fighting for a new future causes Junior to sacrifice many things, including the feeling of losing his identity which he faces throughout the story. He has to decide to let this feeling go or allow for it to remain with him and cause him to struggle with integrating himself. Therefore, he starts to realize that he “might be a lonely Indian boy” (217) but he is not “alone in his
In The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, one cause of Junior’s struggle between being an individual and a member of the community is when Junior moves to Rearden which causes him to gain more confidence and the opportunity to a better life. Entering the world with a closed mind is by far the scariest thing an individual can do.
When he transferred to Reardan he immediately stood out from the others. " They stared at me, the Indian boy with the black eye and swollen nose, my going away gifts from rowdy. Those white kids couldn't believe their eyes. They stared at me Like I was Bigfoot or a UFO"( Alexie 56 ). He didn't have a single thing in common with the students at Reardan. Junior is an impoverished Indian, but that's not all there is to him. No one is a part of one group, differences are what make us people not robots. Junior came to a "huge realization", " I realized that, sure I was a Spokane Indian. I belonged to that tribe. But I also belonged to the tribe of American immigrants. And to the tribe of basketball players. And to the tribe of bookworms"( Alexie 217 ). At this point of the story Junior in resolving his inner conflict, by understanding that he can belong to more than one group. Which is a sign of growing up. Getting picked on is the norm for Junior. He said it himself, " Yep, I belong to the Black-eye-of-the-Month Club "(Alexie 4). In the Rez Junior is a nobody. He gets bullied by everyone there, including his "best friend" Rowdy. But Junior never defends himself because, the bullies are bigger and stronger. Junior was transferring from a tough community. Which automatically meant he was associated with criminals and tough guys. Junior knew what the students at Reardan