According to an unknown author, “A grandmother is a little bit parent, a little bit teacher, and a little bit best friend.” This statement proves to be a reality for the main character in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, written by Sherman Alexie. In this book, Arnold, (also known as Junior), has a grandmother called, Grandmother Spirit, who shapes his life indefinitely despite being seen rarely throughout the book. Grandmother Spirit is a significant presence in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, as she functions as both a teacher and an example to follow for Junior, affecting his development and thus creating many themes. First and foremost, Junior’s grandmother is an incredible teacher for him from the very …show more content…
An example of her passing wisdom on to Junior can be seen after Junior gets into a fight with Roger, an older boy who goes to Reardan High School with him. Junior was confused to as why Roger did not hit him back during their fight, and Grandmother Spirit offered him a wise piece of advice, saying, “‘I think it means he respects you’” (Alexie 68). She took a minute to think before expressing her opinion, putting thought into her views before sharing them with her grandson.When Junior starts to doubt her, she says, “‘...You see, you men and boys are like packs of wild dogs. This giant boy is the alpha male of the school, and you’re the new dog, so he pushed you around a bit to see how tough you are’” (68). Her words turn out to be true when the next day at school, Roger compliments Junior before leaving him alone. Grandmother Spirit’s ideas about why Roger did not continue the fight led Junior to eventually seek out a friendship with Roger, which eventually leads to them being close enough for Roger to lend Junior money, give him rides home, and play on the same basketball team. Junior’s …show more content…
She teaches Junior how to turn the other cheek and excuse the habits of others that they cannot control, yet also how to avoid those issues in his own life. An example of this would be following the motif of alcoholism in this book. Many residents of the Spokane Indian reservation are alcoholics, including Junior’s father, but Grandmother Spirit never drank in her entire life. She explained it by saying, “‘ Drinking would shut down my seeing and my hearing and my feeling...Why would I want to be in the world if I couldn’t touch the world with all of my senses intact?’” (158). Grandmother Spirit uses herself as an example for Junior to follow; she does not want him to become dependent on alcohol like so many other people on the reservation. This also affects his development, as he becomes weary of alcohol. Junior’s grandmother also manages to impact Junior with her unfortunate passing towards the end of the book, when she is struck by a car with a person under the influence at the wheel. A doctor at the hospital talks about her last words by saying, “‘She said, ‘Forgive him’...I think she was referring to the drunk driver who killed her’” (157). Grandmother Spirit had forgiven the man who took her life from her, and wanted her family, (including Junior), to do the same. Her influence as a whole in his
The Grandmother is a bit of a traditionalist, and like a few of O’Connor’s characters is still living in “the old days” with outdated morals and beliefs, she truly believes the way she thinks and the things she says and does is the right and only way, when in reality that was not the case. She tends to make herself believe she is doing the right thing and being a good person when in actuality it can be quite the opposite. David Allen Cook says in hi...
This essay will contrast a good and evil concept between two different stories. There is an obvious distinction that stands out between the stories; however they are similar in one way. In A Worn Path (Eudora Welty) and A Good Man is Hard to Find (Flannery O’Conner) the one thing that sticks out, is the main character in both stories. The main character in both stories being the grandmother. Grandmothers are of course an important part of the family. In each story we have a grandmother of a different race, appearance, and attitude. In each story the grandmothers take different journeys, but there is one thing they both face being treated disrespected. We live in a world in which the grandmother resides with the family and helps to take care of the grandchildren. In the world today things are different and times are still hard if not harder. We live in a time when respect is no longer earned. Now days it seems as if respect is not as important as it was in earlier years and it is evident in these two stories.
The grandmother; is not godly, prayerful, or trustworthy but she is a troublesome character. She raised her children without spirutuality, because she is not a believer, she is Godless.
Lisa as a young teen begins to manage her special gift to connect with spirits by progressing from the motivation her grandmother gave her to grasp a stronger understanding of what she spiritually obtains. Lisa’s grandmother encourages her to learn about the spirit world and the consequences that follow, to make sure her mistakes don’t mislead her, “Never trust the spirit world too much. They think much differently from the living.”(Robinson, 153). Ma ma oo (Lisa’s grandmother) ensures that Lisa is provided with the knowledge of the supernatural world at her current age so she will be prepared for the future and along with that she wants her to being to learn about herself through these teachings and develop from them. Considering that the bond between Lisamarie and her grandmother is already well established it makes the understanding and communication of the spirit world more interesting for her. Overtime Lisa becomes curious about her gift of connecting with spirits, “What do spirits look like?”...
Although this story is told in the third person, the reader’s eyes are strictly controlled by the meddling, ever-involved grandmother. She is never given a name; she is just a generic grandmother; she could belong to anyone. O’Connor portrays her as simply annoying, a thorn in her son’s side. As the little girl June Star rudely puts it, “She has to go everywhere we go. She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day” (117-118). As June Star demonstrates, the family treats the grandmother with great reproach. Even as she is driving them all crazy with her constant comments and old-fashioned attitude, the reader is made to feel sorry for her. It is this constant stream of confliction that keeps the story boiling, and eventually overflows into the shocking conclusion. Of course the grandmother meant no harm, but who can help but to blame her? O’Connor puts her readers into a fit of rage as “the horrible thought” comes to the grandmother, “that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee” (125).
She is a manipulator when it comes to any aspect of her life. Ideally, the grandmother was selfish and care about herself. For instance, when the author has her saying “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady (O’Connor). The author let it be known at that second that the grandmother was only thinking about herself. As if she was traveling with a group of strangers. Throughout the story, the grandmother shows that she can be dishonest towards her family. “She woke up and recalled an old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once when she was a young lady” (O’Conner). The grandmother did this to manipulate the situation causing the ride to be delayed. Thus, she was lying to the children about the secret panel in the house. Therefore, she caused chaos in the car. The author made it seem that the grandmother was very content with that she has caused. Even when she realized that the location of the house that she was referring to was not up that road at all. But she remained quiet or did she know this along. She was quick to judge and tell someone what not to do. But she never turned her eye on herself. That she was selfish and dishonest to her
The grandmother is very judgmental and her actions lead up to her family’s death. She calls a little boy a cute “little pick ninny” and we see her true colors. Pick ninny is a derogatory word towards black people and no good Christian woman would ever say those words (O’Connor 412). The grandmother tries very hard to be a good woman but her actions oppose everything she wants society to believe about her. The grandmother sees that her grandchildren are not the most behaved kids so she tells them they should be good people by listening and showing respect. She wants her grandchildren to have respect for their “native states and their parents and for everything else” (O’Connor 412). She tries to tell her grandchildren to be good
Porter and Welty both provide flashbacks and memories in their stories to help the reader see what Granny and Sister’s lives were like before everything fell apart with their families. Porter’s “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” is packed of the flashbacks and memories of Granny’s past relationships with the only people she loves even though are all dead. She reminisced about her youthful days when she was strong, independent, and with John, the man who stood her up at the altar and died when Granny was young. She still loves him and wants to see him, but “John would be looking for a young woman with the peaked Spanish comb in her hair and the painted fan,” (Porter 81) she believed he would not recognize her. Granny also lost one of her daughters, Hapsy along with her newborn who also died. When Granny brought those memories to the surface a fog of darkness, clouds reality and she gets lost and recalls that, “there was the day, the day, but a whirl of dark smoke rose and covered it, crept up and over into the bright field where everything was planted so c...
Nikki Giovanni and Linda Hogan both wrote poems in the 1970s about their grandmothers that seem totally different to the unaware reader. In actuality, they are very similar. These two poems, Legacies and Heritage, express the poet’s value of knowledge passed down from grandmother to granddaughter, from generation to generation. Even though the poems are composed and read very differently, the underlying message conveyed is the same, and each are valid first-hand accounts of legacies and heritages.
One trait that the grandmother possesses is the ability to manipulate the other characters indirectly. For example, the grandmother tries to convince the father into going to Tennessee rather Florida by telling him about a loose criminal. “‘I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did” (1). The grandmother is attempting to play on the father’s parental concern and change his mind about where the family goes on vacation. She does not actually care about The Misfit being loose, the grandmother just wants to satisfy her demands. If the family had been going to Tennessee and The Misfit was loose in Tennessee, the grandmother most likely would have not said anything because she would be getting exactly what she wanted. Later on, the grandmother tricks the family into visiting an old house by telling the children about a hidden panel in the walls of the house. “‘There was a secret panel in this house,’ she said craftily, not
Even though the Grandmother shows to be a victim of rudeness, hostile statements, and dangerous situations, she still stood by her morals regardless of the situations. In the first paragraph, the grandmother is a victim of her grandchildren and at the end, she is a victim of a murderer who ironically is much nicer to her than her own grandchildren! It is easily observed that the grandmother’s morals involve making her environment as pleasant as her personality. At the beginning, you can see how the grandchildren are making hostile comments towards the grandmother about going on the trip with them. As she sits in the back seat with the hostile children instead of allowing them to ruin her mood, she decides to point out the “ interesting details of the scenery- stone mountain’s; the blue granite, the brilliant red clay banks slightly streaked with purple”…. (pg 199). At the end while a victim of a murderer the grandmother still tried to make some good out of the situation. “Ain’t a cloud in the sky” he remarked. “Yes it is a beautiful day” said the grandmother. “Listen you shouldn’t call yourself misfit because I know you’re a good man at heart. I can just look at you and tell.” The grandmother said (pg 205). As stated earlier the grandmother was dedicated to keeping her moral of making her environment as pleasant as her personality!
The grandmother shows throughout the short story that she is concerned for herself only. From the beginning, when she tries to make the family go up to Tennessee because she wanted to, until the end when she only stands up for herself against The Misfit. The grandmother, because she considered herself to be a lady, and few others to be good, saw herself above those around her. She saw something special in herself, which was why she insisted to The Misfit that, “You wouldn’t shoot a lady” (14). Even as her son is taken back into the woods to be shot, she remains still. This combined with the authority that she feels comes with her age and position in the family vault her importance far above that of her family that she is with. Her self-elevation, in turn, affects her morals, as she sees the flaws in others but not in herself, and views it as selfish when others get what they want. The grandmother’s narrow-minded egocentric behavior that she exhibits, along with he...
...ey have surrounded her with. She longs for a deeper connection with her past, but she realizes this is not to be, at least not as far as her family is concerned. She must adhere to the role of the loyal daughter as it has been established through many generations, and strive not to shame the family as her aunt did many years ago.
The grandmother is trying to connect with The Misfit because she could sense the inner struggle he was experiencing, which is revealed in their conversation. The grandmother is not in the least concerned with God at this point, but tries to connect with the Misfit any way she can. The grandmother recognizes the Misfit as one of her own children and reaches out to touch him. It’s the moment of grace for her anyway. She reaches out because she has been touched by the Grace that comes through him in his particular suffering (Hendricks 207). After feeling like all hope was gone, “She found herself saying, "Jesus. Jesus," meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was saying it, sounded as if she might be cursing” (O’Connor 384). It seems that the grandmother is displaying a good Christian spirit, but she's 'taking the name in vain', putting her further into the category of the damned. O’Conner, further strengthens the grandmother’s façade of Christanity, when she instantly forms into a real believer, “If you would pray,” the old lady said, “Jesus would help you” (O’Conner 384). O’Conner also suggest the possibility of dramatic transformation in a person. Having just lost all of her family and threatened with death herself, the Grandmother appears to undergo a sudden and miraculous change of heart: she reaches out lovingly to the
Spirit : My Grandma, Mildred Johnson, is a true woman of faith. For as far back as I can remember, my Grandma has been a conveyor of the word of God in developing her family and living her daily life. Never would she miss a Sunday to share the word and love of God. As time moves forward not all of God’s children remain strong enough as before to lead his flock. Nor can all of God’s choir continue to sing quite as loudly as they always have. This is the time when the Lord takes them into his hands to rest their souls as he has now done with Mildred. Make no mistake, however, as the legacy of spirit that she has created in all of us will continue to live on.