Part-Time Indian Recoveries

Recoveries and discoveries in The absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Through history, Native Americans have faced a lot of discrimination and difficulties and there has always been soldiers in confrontation with those struggles. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, written by Sherman Alexie, is a novel about a fourteen year-old Native American boy who lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Junior has a number of physical problems due to the fact that he was born with a brain problem, called Hydrocephalus. Furthermore, he struggles with several social problems in his family, on the reservation, and in school. Each time he tries to solve these problems in different ways. Junior encounters many different forms of loss in

the story that sometimes, he is overcome by them; however, he discovers and recovers different areas of strength to help conquer those losses and their griefs.
The incessant existence of death leads to other kinds of loss that junior struggles to discover the value of the emotional scars which they leave on his life throughout the story.

The greatest loss that affects the lives of the people on the reservation is death which is quite common. Junior explains, “We Indian have lost EVERYTHING. We lost our native land, we lost our language, we lost our songs and dances. We lost each other. We only know how to lose and be lost” (173). However Junior’s family suffers from various complications such as poverty and alcoholism, they never stop supporting him, emotionally and mentally. This is the most significant factor that helps junior regain his hope after he is confronted with the death of his loved ones time and time again. The recovery of his emotional scars and regaining his hope through fighting to change his written destiny makes him call himself a warrior, a warrior in the way of

life.
In some way, Junior experiences the loss and recovery of identity when he moves from Wellpinit to Reardan to discover new things, try to find hope, and change his future.

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

loneliness” (217). Also, Junior makes a list of the tribes which he belonged to and that heavy weight feeling of losing his identity is alleviated by this list.
Loss of friendship can happen to anybody and it can influence a person’s life from different aspects. In the story, Junior suffers when his friendship with Rowdy, the boy who had always protected him, breaks apart, causing this event to affect his life as the story goes on. After Junior decides to go to the Reardan, Rowdy has a problem with Junior’s absence and he cannot forgive him. Junior tries to recover their broken friendship and replace Gordy instead of him. Junior Explains, “We laughed like crazy. It was a good day. Dad was sober. Mom was getting ready to nap. Grandma was already napping. But I missed Rowdy. I kept looking at the door” (102). Even when he spends a happy time with his family on Thanksgiving night, he still feels Rowdy’s absence and misses him. Junior is very connected to Rowdy and he sees Rowdy as a member of his family. Even though his estrangement from his best friend hurts him emotionally, he tries to constantly rebuild their friendship and have Rowdy back in his life again. Sometimes the loss of friendship leads to sadness and a loss of hope which Junior fights to regain in many different ways. However, he never quits attempting to make Rowdy forgive him and get their friendship back. The loss of friendship affects his life in both positive and negative ways. Trying to recover what they once shared between them helps Junior find the strength within himself and to admit various sides of life. Regardless, any friendship that is meant to be continued, will eventually find its own way back. At the end of the book, Rowdy and Junior become friends again after they both realized a different viewpoint of friendship. They play basketball for hours. Junior said, “Rowdy and I played one-on-one for hours. We played until the streetlights lit up the court. We played until the bats swooped down at our heads. We played until the moon was hug and golder and perfect in the dark sky. We didn’t keep score” (230). They both know that friendship is not about winning or losing, it is about forgiveness and completing each other.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, written by Sherman Alexie, is a book full of different concepts of the life of Native Americans. As Junior confronts many losses, in many dissimilar forms, he attempts to recover and discover different aspects of life. Today, loss plays a major role in people’s lives. In every corner of the Earth, there are people who lose something important in their life. Loss through death, loss of dreams and hope, loss of identity, loss of friendship, and loss of what people have feelings for all have play an immense part of life in this world. People cannot do anything to prevent these misfortunes from happening. The only thing that people can do is find a way that works for them to help relieve grief and pain. This is important in order to rebuild and recover from a loss and to learn how to discover the value of hardships.