Sherman Alexie Indian Identity

The novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, written by Sherman Alexie and illustrated by Ellen Forney, is a bestselling winner of several awards that covers a lot of important and polemics themes, such as racism, bullying, violence, poverty and prejudice. Despite that, the literature is easy to read and funny, the subjects are shown lightly, making the readers think critically about them without big difficulties. Based by Alexie’s own experiences, the story is a first-person narrative about a fourteen-years-old teenager called Arnold Spirit or “Junior” who lives in a Spokane Indian reservation. Contradicting all the expectations on him, Junior leaves the reservation to study in all-white school to improve his chances to achieve

his personal goal: to have a different and better life than the other Spokanes. Moreover, the book shows us the difficulties that are faced by Junior, as he leaves his comfort zone and experiences how very positive it can be. Junior’s story makes readers think about how internal and external expectations manifest themselves, how societal expectations impact their identities and individual goals, and helps readers to understand themselves and the world around them.
Internal and external expectations manifest themselves in our lives. Junior’s story is all about expectations and how huge the impact is on people lives. There is a part of book that illustrate this perfectly, “Overnight, I became a good player. I suppose it had something to do with confidence. I mean, I’d always been the lowest Indian on the reservation totem pole - I wasn’t expected to be good so I wasn’t. But in Reardan, my coach and the other players wanted me to be good. They need me to be good, They expected me to be good. And so I became good.” (Alexie 180). This quote shows external expectations affect the internal expectations too, and both affect a lot people’s actions, thoughts, vision of the world, of themselves, and of their capabilities.
External expectations have the power to help and destroy someone, because it causes a lot of pressure and most parts of people have problems enduring this. Moreover, it is not just about bad expectations but good expectations too. For example, Rowdy became a violent kid because of poor expectations, in contrast, Penelope became bulimic because of the best expectations possibles. They let the pressure of the external expectations affected negatively their lives.
Unlike Penelope and Rowdy, the mainly character Junior shows to readers it is possible face and change external expectations. Junior is a teenager with a lot of bad expectations over him, because of his health problems, environment, economic level, and ethnic. But he has very strong internal expectations about what he wants to his future. Throughout story, he worked hard, endured a lot of pressure, faced many difficult situations. Notwithstanding all these things, Junior did not change his internal expectations or gave up on his goals, he made the external expectations about him change. It is not an easy task but it is possible we just need to have control about our actions and focus to achieve our goals.
Societal expectations can have impact on our identities.

All of us belong to a society that commonly tries dictate how we should behave, think, what to believe, it implicitly creates stereotypes for everything. Furthermore, the worst part of this is that society dictates the limits for people, what people are not able to do and achieve because of factors such as, education, economic level, race, etc. All of these expectations influence on identity formation, because the reality and common sense are part of the identity. As an illustration, follows a part of book: “But we reservation Indians don’t get to realize our dreams. We don’t get those chances. Or choices. We’re just poor. That’s all we are. [...] Poverty doesn’t give you strenght or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.” (Alexie 13). After read this quote readers can realize how the societal expectations affect negatively people’s perspective about their future and their chances because of the actual reality. Indians from Junior’s reservation do not have any perspective about a better life or thinking to leave the reservations because the societal expectations are just about they continue to be poor and they grow up absorbing this idea and making it part of their

identities.
The society can impact factors that form character such as principles, behaviors, beliefs, honor, and social rules, they are more influenced by the culture of the community that people belong. These are important aspects of identity. A great example about this is mentioned by Junior when he had problems at school, he tells about a kind of guide of Spokane Indian rules of fight “1. If somebody insults you, then you have to fight him. [...] 4. If somebody insults any of your family or friends, or if you think they’re going to insult your family or friends, or if you think they’re thinking about insulting your family or friends, then you have to fight him.” (Alexie 61). This quote shows us about how much Indians expectations influenced Junior’s identity and notion about how act in this kind of situation.
A person’s responsibility to their family, culture, tribe, or community should take precedence over their individual goals just if these responsibilities are real and justifiable . Responsibility is about have a duty or obligation to take care or to do, so if someone have responsibilities to his or her family or community it happens because he or she is necessary to determined situation or is the best person to deal with. At the same time, people need to identify what really are their responsibilities because sometimes external factors make many things look like responsibilities when actually they are not. The novel’s story has a lot of situations where this kind of idea can be seen. As an illustration: “‘But you still live there, don’t you? You’re just going to school here.’ ‘I know, I know, but some Indians think you have to act white to make your life better. Some Indians think you become white if you try to make your life better, if you become successful.’” (Alexie 131). This quote evidences the erroneous responsibilities that people can attribute, the Indians of the reservation attribute to Junior the responsibility of maintain the Indian culture, being how the others Indians, belonging to the circle of poverty and forgetting his personal goal of have a better life.
Although the responsibilities to others, our goals are responsibilities too, but it is about us with ourselves. And sometimes it is not a choice to prioritize our goals over our responsibilities with others, it is just a sad coincidence our actions cause bad effects in others lives. To illustrate this, there are the climax of the book, the final basketball game: “ And I knew that Rowdy’s father probably going to beat the crap out of him for losing this game. I suddenly wanted to apologize to Rowdy, to all of the other Spokanes.” (Alexie 196). Junior wins the game resulted in bad effects to Rowdy and other Spokanes, but it does not mean that Junior chose left their responsibilities to them to achieve of his personal goal.
Literature can help us to understand ourselves and the world around us. It happens because books are the best way to learn and live for a while another realities. People can identify themselves with character’s, make connections with situations and find different perspectives on book to face the real life.
There are many kinds of books, novel, self help, drama, technical, etc.

Each kind has a purpose, although, all of them make people think of different ways. Of these kinds, two types can make we understand better how things work, ourselves and the actual world where we live: technical and novel books. Technical books help us how things work because are more specific, have exactly the information that readers need. They are more efficiently when the objective is learning. They can help readers mainly on school and college. As an illustration of this, in Brazil on college, most students of Computer Science or some major related to Information Technology needs to read the book Modern Operating Systems by Andrew S. Tanenbaum. This book has the necessary content for students understand the subjects easily. Novel books really help readers to understand themselves and the world because usually they are about one or more main characters that have a interesting story that happens in some moment and place in history. So this kind of book have three parts with which readers can make connections: characters, situations and background. When people make connections they can understand themselves better and see their characteristics and situations through the book. To illustrate this point, the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was read by the students of BSMP (Brazilian Scientific Mobility Program) and everyone made connections with the character Junior, because

they, as Junior, left their homes and comfort zone to search a better life. Another important fact about novels is how the background is important and how much we can learn with them, sometimes the background is about a historical important fact then it is can be a amazing way to learn about it. For example, the book The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne can teach a lot about the World War II because the story occur in this time.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian has an amazing story that shows us through the strong characters two distinct realities that were lived by Junior, Spokane reservation and the all-white school Reardan, and the positive and negative characteristics about these realities. Throughout the novel the readers can learn a lot about how is a Indian reservation and mainly can develop their opinion about very important social problems. As an illustration of this point, there are many situations in the story where bullying, poverty, prejudice, racism and alcoholism are emphasized. In conclusion, this book teaches us about hope, about how great internal and external expectations can overcome the bad societal expectations and an inappropriate environment, and how each person has power over their own actions to search a better future and achieve their goals.