Friday Night Lights Essay On Identity

Identity, which widely ranges from race, geography, gender, age, and to education, is one of the tools to define someone. However, identity sometimes becomes an obstacle to someone who tries to overcome his or her original identity throughout their life to achieve their dreams and goals, as revealed in both Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and a film Friday Night Lights. Although both Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Friday Night Lights are about teenagers who try to overcome one aspect of their identities by facing the reality, the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is focused on overcoming pressures related to race, while Mike in the Friday night lights is focused on overcoming the pressures related to family

and society.
Both Arnold and Mike from the book Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and the film Friday Night Lights are teenagers who fight against their identities. On one hand, Arnold in Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a fourteen-year-old boy, who lives in Indian reservation. In the beginning part of the story, in his geometry class, he notices a mark on his “new” textbook: “This book belongs to Agnes Adams [Arnold’s mom]” (Alexie 31). His realization of his school and tribe’s poorness “is absolutely the saddest thing in the world”, and his “hopes and dreams floated up” (Alexie 31). This suggests that Arnold was so frustrated on the fact that his own race is so poor and has no hope, and he throws his textbook to the wall, which results in hitting Mr. P’s face. Arnold gets suspension for this act, and he has a conversation with Mr. P. This conversation becomes Arnold’s starting point of fighting against his identity defined by race, which is moving to another school composed mostly of white. By making such decision, Arnold decides to try to pursue his dream with hope by coming out of his original identity’s place – Indian Reservation school. On the other hand, Mike in Friday Night Lights is a seventeen-year-old white American football player in Permian High School. He deals with his own identity as well. Even though it is not explicitly expressed throughout the movie, it is clear that Mike has to take care of his mom, who is sick. Throughout the movie, Mike’s dad does not appear, and there seems no one else present to take care of her instead of Mike. All of the town neighborhoods know about this, so before the football season starts, when he goes to a restaurant with his friend Billingsley, several neighborhoods say, “How’s she doing? (Friday Night Lights)” or “Say hi to your mom” (Friday Night Lights). Furthermore, in the very beginning of the movie, there is a scene of his mom asking Mike, “You gonna get a scholarship? (Friday Night Lights)”. This scene infers that Mike’s family’s financial situation is not enough to aid Mike for college fees, so that Mike has another barrier to overcome in addition to taking care of her mom and play the football games. As several scenes revealing his identity related to family, Mike is defined as such person in his society by others and he has to carry it on his path to win the state championship of the football with his true enjoyment and not pressured attitude.
Even though both Arnold and Mike are in their adolescent ages and go journeys of overcoming their identities, they fight against different kinds of identities; Arnold fights against racial pressure and Mike does against social pressure.

After Arnold decides to move to Reardan High School, he encounters barriers due to his racial identity several times. For example, when he first meets Roger, who is white American, Roger and his friends make fun of Arnold by sayings such as calling him as “‘chief’”, ‘Tonto’, or ‘Squaw Boy’” (Alexie 64). Arnold could have just ignored and avoided to fight back. However, he chooses to face reality and fight back Roger and his friends bullying him by punching Roger in his face. Then, Arnold was afraid that Roger might revenge on him, but it did not happen at all. Instead, this becomes an opportunity for Roger to respect Arnold as the same classmate regardless of racial background. Arnold even becomes true friends with Roger even though he has different racial definition. This is significant friendship to Arnold in terms of achieving his goals and dreams because it suggests that he approaches one step forward to his dream of being famous and rich as an artist by overcoming his racial background: Indian. On the other hand, Mike in Friday Night Lights struggles through finding real meaning of playing football to himself by overcoming pressures surrounding him towards the state championship. Before the championship games, he plays football partially because there is a possibility of getting scholarship, and partially because winning the state championship a big thing in his town Odessa, Texas; however, he does not seem to heartily enjoy playing it. When the admission officers of Kansas Wesleyan asks “Do you like playing football?” (Friday Night Lights) and “Is it fun for you?” (Friday Night Lights) to Mike, he responds by saying “Lots of fun, sir” (Friday Night Lights) without full confidence in his voice and attitude. Mike’s unsureness

towards his feelings on football is revealed in that scene. In addition, he also has pressure from the neighborhoods in his town to overcome while he tries to find the reason why he plays football. Going back to the restaurant scene, his neighbors not only asks him to say hello to his mom, they also keep push Mike and his teammates to win the state championship by saying “Get that state championship” (Friday Night Lights) or “My baby girl and the next Texas state championship quarterback” (Friday Night Lights). They keep mentions and implies that those seventeen-year-old football players in Permian High School should be fully ready and will definitely get the championship for the whole town. Throughout the games, in absence of Boobie Miles, the best player in Permian High school football team, Mike tries to deal with all pressures ranging from family to whole town and simultaneously find his own meaning and passion for playing football.
The difference between type of identities Arnold and Mike fight for is also evident in the middle and ending of their journeys. In Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Arnold becomes friends with white classmates even though he belongs to different race. For instance, he accidently sees Penelope, one of the popular girls in Reardan High school, vomiting. Then Arnold says, “Don’t give up” (Alexie 108), and Penelope starts crying and telling about her loneliness and fear of not being able to “be scared because she is pretty and smart and popular” (Alexie 108). Before this encounter, Arnold tries to talk to Penelope several times, but this incident really becomes a chance for Arnold and Penelope to be real friends without having their racial differences. This further becomes one step closer to Arnold’s dreams, which includes overcoming his poor background and being rich and renowned artist.

To conclude, even though Arnold Spirit Junior in Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian overcomes his racial identity and Mike Winchell in Friday Night Lights fights against his socially constructed identity, both Mike and Arnold are teenagers who tries to overcome their identity barriers in the middle of their journeys to achieve their dreams. Both literature suggests that identity, which might just seem as one of the ways to define and characterize people, can be an obstacle to others in the middle of their path to success and achieving goals.