Have you ever been made fun of and picked on? In the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Arnold, a teenager on a small, depressed Indian reservation found and held on to hope, endured endless loss and somehow found a way to persevere through it all. The story starts on a small Indian reservation with not a lot of hope. Arnold goes to his first class, which is math. He gets his textbook and finds out it is the same one as his mom used! He then throws the book at his teacher Mr.P and gets suspended from school. While he is home on his suspension, Mr.P comes to visit his house and tells him, “You have to take your hope where other people have hope”. Arnold takes that advice and goes to Reardan, a very nice school where all the white …show more content…
kids who have hope go. He is bullied and picked on and has to tough it out because he knows that if he goes back to the reservation, he will end up just like the rest of the Indians there, hopeless. While all of this is happening, Arnold’s dog Oscar gets sick and the family is too poor to afford to go to the doctor.
His mom and dad talk about an alternative plan and they come up with a solution, shoot him. “So I heard the boom of my father’s rifle when he shot my best friend”. About 3 months later, his grandma, a legend at Indian pow-wows is walking home from a pow-wow when she is hit by a drunk driver. A few weeks after that, his dad’s best friend Eugene is shot and killed by one of his good friends, Bobby, over the last drink of wine. “We’d lost my grandmother and Eugene, how much loss are we supposed to endure?”. He considers dropping out of Reardan but after some encouragement from his friends, he stays in school but misses about a month. When he comes back to school, his teacher makes a mean comment regarding his loss in his life. His classmates take a stand and walk out on the teacher. Finally, his sister, who ran away to Montana, is killed by a fire that was created by someone leaving the stove on. “But it’s not too comforting to learn that your sister was too freaking drunk to feel any pain when she burned to death!”. Arnold is really saddened when he lost his sister because he liked her and they were
close. To conclude the book, Arnold becomes more confident with himself and his identity. He grows up and realizes that alcohol can kill so many lives, he even makes a promise to be just like his grandma and not touch a drop of it. He makes friends, gets a girlfriend and is one of the stars on the Varsity basketball team. He also hangs out with his best friend since birth, Rowdy, for the first time since Arnold told him that he was leaving for Reardan and they became worst enemies.
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.
By the end of the book, Arnold experiences a lot of deaths of people who mean a lot to him but he still found hope. Arnold becomes a warrior for leaving the reservation and going to Reardan. Although there is hardly any hope on the reservation, Arnold knows that there is hope outside of the reservation. The reservation has a horrible education and on page 3 when Arnold was at school Arnold says, “My school and tribe are so poor that we have to study from the same dang books our parents studied from.”
The nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn Josh is so drunk that he starts to panic that there is a real life earthquake occurring. When in reality it is just the effect of alcohol on him. If Mr. Arnold did not leave for the navy, Josh would not of hallucinated there is an earthquake, he would of not fallen and lose balance, and his speech would not become slurred. Josh screams "earthquake" to get everyones attention, but they all just look at him like he is crazy. Mr. Arnold's son is not only faced with negative consequences due to his leave, but also positive ones that help him gain skills that he would not have acquired without this.
Have you ever wanted something really badly, but couldn’t afford it? This is a common occurrence, but what about food? Have you ever went to be hungry because you couldn’t afford to eat? Unfortunately, Junior, the main character in the book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, felt exactly this way for food. Even though Junior didn’t have as many resources as the other “white kids,” he still chose to look at the positives. This novel shows that even in times of great hardship, people can still choose to have hope and look at the good in their lives.
Muhammad Ali once said, “He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.” Sherman Alexie makes this a big point in his novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. This book, Arnold “Junior” Spirit is faced with the decision of whether he should trade his familiar school life on an Indian Reservation for a slightly better education at an all-White school in a small town named Reardan. This is his only way to achieve a better future. Throughout the novel Junior has to fight against criticism for acting differently in order to protect his mindset. Outside forces such as discrimination of race or social status deeply impact one’s hopes, dreams and self-esteem.
Adolescents experience a developmental journey as they transition from child to adult, and in doing so are faced with many developmental milestones. Physical, cognitive, social and emotional changes are occurring during this tumultuous stage of life, and making sense of one’s self and identity becomes a priority. Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian addresses the challenges of adolescence in an engaging tale, but deals with minority communities and cultures as well.
At a point in time, Arnold and Rowdy become best friends once again. This friendship between Arnold and Rowdy that Alexie has integrated into the novel illustrates a hardship between personal companions and personal prosperity, perfectly. Hardship is everywhere, but Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian” is an amusing and intelligent novel that clearly provides the reader with perfect examples of poverty and friendship on an Indian reservation. Alexie incorporates those examples through the point of view and experiences of a fourteen year old boy named Arnold Spirit Jr.
Five million two hundred thousand Native Americans are suffering from poverty, alcoholism, unemployment and high rates of suicide (Peralta, "Native Americans Left Behind”). In the unfortunate events of discrimination and prejudice against First Nations, they are at huge disadvantages and do not have many rights (McCue, "Racism against Aboriginal People”). Sherman Alexie, is able to share and beautifully capture the experiences of a typical Native American through his book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Throughout this novel, Junior shares his struggles of being an ethnic minority, who is a hydrocephalic, has a stutter, and a lisp (Alexie 1-4). Junior’s teacher on reservation advises him to transfer schools because he says
Identity. Social Injustice. Coming of age. Those are three out of several other themes that are touched on in The Diary of a Part-Time Indian, written by Sherman Alexie.
Every day, people live their lives without deep thought about the health and wellness of their community. When faced with harsh living conditions or situations, it is easy to become stuck in a negative mentality which doesn’t allow room for positive thoughts in order to create positive change. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, it explores the areas and factors of public health that ordinary people may or may not be aware of. The main character in the story, Junior, says “There’s always time to change your life”, a statement that can be true for anyone who is still young, has a decent amount of support, and hope to pull them through tough situations.
In the Sherman Alexie’s novel, The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian, he uses characterization on Penelope to establish the idea that people are different on the inside and have different problems and dreams that aren't shown to others that should be expressed. One day at school, Junior is walking through the hallway when he hears a girl vomiting in the bathroom. He asks if she is ok, but she angrily refuses to answer, continuing to vomit. Once she comes out of the bathroom, Junior recognizes her as Penelope. She reveals to Junior that she is bulimic. Penelope is an addict just like Junior’s father. Penelope fixes her problems by “ [gorging] on her pain and then [throwing] it up and flushes it away. [His] dad drinks his pain away” (Alexie 105-109). When Junior learns
The primary conflict in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie is the main character Arnold’s internal conflict of whether he should stay and be loyal to the his people or go to a school with better opportunities. After coming up with the idea and strongly deciding to to go to Reardan High School, his mind started to waver, as he couldn’t figure out if his decision was the right one. In a cartoon he drew on page 43, he expresses his internal conflict by drawing himself next to a sign which points to the reservation and home one way, and opportunity along with the unknown the other way. This cartoon perfectly embodies his moral dilemma: whether to be loyal to his culture and heritage or to increase his chances of hope by going to a school where students have opportunities.
Where is hope? What is hope? Who can have hope? Trying to solve these questions, Sherman Alexie’s book, The Absolutely True Diary o f a Part-Time Indian investigates the journey of a budding 14 year-old cartoonist named Junior, or Arnold Spirit. Being a poor, Indian living on a reservation, that suffers from hydrocephalus, Junior does not get the liberty of having the easiest life. He is picked on by everybody other than his best friend Rowdy, “the toughest kid on the rez. [] Long and lean and strong like a snake” (Alexie, 15). Junior, determined to receive a better education and life despite the culture of failure he was born into, decides to leave the rez to attend an all-white school in the neighbouring town, the only Indian present there,
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.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time is about a boy is living on an Indian Reservation in Washington state. This boy's name is Arnold Spirit or Junior. He and his family are fighting poverty, education deprivation, and a hopeless future for their son. It seems that Arnold does not have a chance to break this vicious cycle. His helplessness is not helping make his life change. He is staying in an unwanted cycle of poverty. Until one of his teachers makes him realize that he does have a future. He just needs to make it happen. There for Arnold changes his current state by going into a new world and opening up new opportunities for his future.