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Essay on the first 5 chapters of the absolute true diary of a part time indian
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Perma Red and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Over the course of the past semester we have read several books about Native American’s and their culture. The two books I found to be the most interesting were Perma Red by Debra Magpie Earling, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. In each story we see a young person from a reservation dealing with their Native Identities, Love, Loss and everything in between. Both of these novels have their similarities and their differences, but I believe they both offer insight into Native American culture that would be hard to come across elsewhere.
Native Identity issues are a common theme throughout both Perma Red & The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (ATDPTI). In ATDPTI we see Arnold Spirit Junior struggle to find his place in both the reservation where he lives, and the primarily white Reardan High School where he attends school. When Arnold transferred from the school on the reservation to Reardan High his fellow tribe members from Wellpinit called him a traitor and didn’t bother to acknowledge his attempts to escape the cycle of poverty and oppression that is often associated with reservation life. They call him names like “apple” (Alexie 131), meaning he may be red-skinned on the outside, but he wants to be white on the inside.
In the story of Perma Red, we see one of the main characters, Charlie Kicking Woman struggle to associate with his people and lose touch with his native identity over time (Earling 267). We also see Louise’s character struggling to find her own identity when she thinks about leaving the reservation in the future. However, when she stays on the reservation and becomes more in touch with her roots she gr...
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...nge relationship I do believe that in the end Penelope really did love Arnold. Not just to spite her father, but because she saw what a strong “warrior” he truly was and saw his strength in overcoming the oppression he faced in every aspect of his life.
In the end, the stories of Perma Red and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian have their similarities and their differences. Both stories tell the tale of two young people from reservations in search of a better future. Whether they succeeded we will never know, but what we do know is that they both advanced as people because of the love they received, the losses they incurred and the trials they overcame.
Works Cited:
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diaries of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2007. Print.
Earling, Debra Magpie. Perma Red. Colorado: BlueHen Books, 2003. Print
Lives for Native Americans on reservations have never quite been easy. There are many struggles that most outsiders are completely oblivious about. In her book The Roundhouse, Louise Erdrich brings those problems to light. She gives her readers a feel of what it is like to be Native American by illustrating the struggles through the life of Joe, a 13-year-old Native American boy living on a North Dakota reservation. This book explores an avenue of advocacy against social injustices. The most observable plight Joe suffers is figuring out how to deal with the injustice acted against his mother, which has caused strife within his entire family and within himself.
I enjoyed reading Disciplined Hearts by Theresa O'Nell because i find that many people today do not know a lot about the Native American culture and what they have been through. Their cultures history is not talked about as much the African American or Hispanic's are. Most Americans know about the hardships that the African American and Hispanics had to overcome to assimilate to the level that they are today. I think O'Nell is trying to talk about the history of the Native American culture because, she believes that the reason that their culture is not well-known because of the fact that they have chosen to keep living like their ancestors and not assimilate to the American culture.
Seale, Doris. Through Indian Eyes: The Native Experience in Books for Children. New Society Publisher, Philadelphia, PA: 1992.
Identity is 'how you view yourself and your life.'; (p. 12 Knots in a String.) Your identity helps you determine where you think you fit in, in your life. It is 'a rich complexity of images, ideas and associations.';(p. 12 Knots in a String.) It is given that as we go through our lives and encounter different experiences our identity of yourselves and where we belong may change. As this happens we may gain or relinquish new values and from this identity and image our influenced. 'A bad self-image and low self-esteem may form part of identity?but often the cause is not a loss of identity itself so much as a loss of belonging.'; Social psychologists suggest that identity is closely related to our culture. Native people today have been faced with this challenge against their identity as they are increasingly faced with a non-native society. I will prove that the play The Rez Sisters showed this loss of identity and loss of belonging. When a native person leaves the reservation to go and start a new life in a city they are forced to adapt to a lifestyle they are not accustomed to. They do not feel as though they fit in or belong to any particular culture. They are faced with extreme racism and stereotypes from other people in the nonreservational society.
Nevertheless, both Welch and Alexie challenge the dominating constructions of Native identity in their attempts to dismantle all forms of identity (both inside and outside indigenous cultures). By deconstructing the stereotypical tribal experience, Zits, Charging Elk and the Narrator offer a more freely defined model of Native American identity. Each character is thus liberated from colonial ascribed identities, and is able to take on a more ahistorical one. In taking on this model, the protagonists subvert the artificial distinction of society, and reveal a true identity of the contemporary Indian.
“I would always love Rowdy. And I would always miss him, too. Just as I would always love and miss my grandmother, and my big sister, and Eugene.” When facing hardships it is important to stay resilient and not let them ruin your connection with others. In the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian the main character Arnold Spirit becomes more resilient as the novel progresses as he deals with being poor, racism from his predominantly white school, and dealing with the deaths of many important figures in his life.
Eating wild rice, hunting and fishing can be the essential evens for Indians who are living on reservations. The culture itself represents the beauty of Indian’s life. Rez life could be violent, harsh when the economy goes down; when whites enter their life without asking. When they fight with whites over something that has to do with its own policy and rights. Life could be simple and happy, when everybody in the rez doing their own business and keep their own briefs. The history was rare, but real life is wild. Non-Indians who like us, don't know much about Rez life, but after reading this book, we all can find out the real meaning of the welcome sign!
American Indian stories is the story of an Indian girl’s childhood experiences and how she went to school and also talks about the different Indian customs. The book sarts out with how her father, uncle and little sister were killed by the white men, and how much her mother resented the white men or palefaces as she called them. Bead work was one of the main things the Indian women did and so the little Indian girl also learned to do bead work by watching her mom. This book also tells of the many Indian myths or beliefs. In one case the little girl and many of the villagers were going to see a young warriors first arrival and their was a great party and during the walk to the center of the camp the little girl tried to grab a plum when her mother told her not to get a plum because the plum bush was growing out of the hands of an Indian boy who always like to play and eat plums. one day missionaries came to the camp to basically send mostly children to the East so they would learn the ways of the white man and also become civilized and in turn help bring more Indians Eastward to help with the modernization of America and Indians. The book describes in detail the regiment of what happened and how the little girl was feeling while she was in school and the day she went back home to visit her mother and also to recruit new children from the school she came from. Finally the little girl became a teacher. The book goes on to describing a warrior chief and his pride and joy in his little daughter and how he didn’t see anyone that would be able to marry his daughter. Blue-Star Woman was an Indian women at
After his father drove him the first day of school, he didn’t have enough gas to drive him the next day. Junior decided the only way to get to school was to walk. “I got lucky though because my dad’s best friend Eugene just happened to be heading to spokane… Hey Junior, he said. Hop on my pony, man” (pg 70). Although Eugene was somewhat drunk when he picked junior up off the side of the road, it was his only other option besides walking to school. Being poor not only affected the way he got to school or whether he even made it to school, it also affected the way people looked at him. Junior’s perspective on white people vs. Indian people was so different because fhow little he had. “Junior describes the way how he has a vanishing past and bone crushing reality vs how white people at Reardon have a bright future and hope.”
The character's feelings of not belonging are represented in his own words, "We just don't seem to fit in anywhere - certainly not among the whites, and not among the older people"(121). Later in the story, as he stands outside the lodge door, he questions if his friends and neighbors will remember him. "Am I Indian, or am I white?"(122). He does not know if living with the whites will cause his people to catego...
“We know who we are, but not who we may be.” This William Shakespeare quote perfectly suits the prevalent theme in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Written by Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a novel about a First Nations teenage boy whose life changes when he chooses to attend a school outside of the reservation he lives on with his family. He is determined to receive a better education than the school on the reservation can offer so he transfers to Reardan, a ¨white¨ school twenty two miles away. In this novel, Sherman Alexie uses the character Arnold Spirit to show that the true identity of a person emerges once they step outside of their
In “ The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-time Indian”, the theme of the book is follow your dreams even if you doubt yourself sometimes. For example in the book it says Junior is super nervous about trying out for basketball at reardan because he thought he wouldn't make it, Sherman Alexie says “that when I knew I was going to make the team. Heck, I ended up on varsity” (Alexie 142) . He says that because he made the basketball team he believed in himself because his dad did too. Junior tried his hardest and followed his dreams. Another way the theme relates to the book is when arnold wanted to leave the rez to get a better education. Alexie says “I was making the attempt too. And maybe it would kill me, too, but I knew that staying on the
There a variety of themes that are discussed in the book The Absolute Diary of a Part-Time Indian. For example, you will see subjects like Mortality, Friendship, Race, Poverty, just to name a few. But, what I would claim to be the main theme of the book is Identity because of the struggle he faced while his transfer from Wellpinit to Reardan, his sister’s ways were being reflected on his life and trying to fit into Reardan while still being poor. The subject gets brought up by Arnold going through his life, not only as a poor Indian in the Reservation but as someone who takes his education seriously and that will do anything to get it. Even change the whole different school far away
Inside the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie you are constantly being slammed in the face with such depressing matters that are dealt within the book, if it’s not racism it’s death, which there’s a lot of death. Other than being slammed in the face with those things there’s also a lot of hope and dreams mentioned along the way that doesn't just involve the main character but those around him, lastly the main character also comes to realization and acceptance of his true identity towards the end of the novel. There’s a lot that goes on inside this novel and within the characters such as Arnold, Mary, and
In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Alexie shows friendships, and how the value of friendship is stronger than anything. Rowdy, Arnold’s best friend for life, his protection and secret keeper; Roger, Arnold’s unexpected, huge, athletic, white friend shows how friendships can come from the biggest rivalries; Gordy, the nerdy white kid who stood up for Arnold when teachers were picking on him, shows that sometimes being brave and standing up for what’s right will make new friends, all show different friendships and how they affect people.