The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian By Sherman Alexie

Norman Cousins, an author and journalist for New York Post, once said, “The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we live”. Norman understood that death was not the worst thing that could have happened but the fact that when a loved one dies, we tend to let a little piece of our humanity die along with it. This is also evident in the novel. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. In the novel, Arnold goes on a quest to find hope and he had to leave the reservation but along his journey he experiences death of his loved ones and starts to lose hope of what it means to be an Indian. Throughout the novel, Alexie reveals insight into hope and mortality, and their connection to one another.

When we get too tired to fight anymore so we give up. That’s when the real work begins. To find hope where there seems to be absolutely none at all.” Farther in the novel, the reader will see the deaths of Arnold’s family members affect him greatly. All the deaths become too much for him to take in so he loses sight of hope for his future. In the end, Arnold learns how to cope with the grief. After Eugene’s death, Arnold is coming to a point where he just gives up and starts to blame himself. Arnold states, “I was so depressed that I thought about dropping out of Reardan. I thought about going back to Wellpinit. I blamed myself for all of the deaths. I had cursed my family. I had left the tribe, and had broken something inside all of us, and I was now being punished for that” (173). All of these deaths have lead Arnold right into a trap and he reached his breaking point. He has lost all hope for himself that he starts blaming himself. Arnold believes that there is a curse on his family because everything that was great about his life is now gone. The reader can feel Arnold’s state. With the phrase, “I had broken something inside all of us”, the reader can see that Arnold blames everything wrong about the Indian race was on him leaving the reservation. After a while Arnold finally returned to school with his teachers not feeling sympathy for him. The students in his class protested against the way the teacher was treating him. From this Arnold started gain hope. Arnold states, “And I kept trying to find the little pieces of joy in my life. That’s the only way I managed to make it through all of that death and change. I made a list of the people who had given me the most joy in my life” (176). This shows that out of all this grieving, the only way to cope is to find the small joys about life. Once Arnold gave up he started to find