Exploring Identity and Cultural Navigation in the book The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. The main character in the story, Arnold Spirt Jr, also known as Junior, lives on a Spokane Indian reservation. He faces lots of different social environments. Some of which are good, and others not so much. As Junior navigates from his dominant Native American culture to the predominantly white culture at his new school, he faces many challenges that relate to his identity and culture. Throughout Junior's life, he has always been made fun of for being different from the rest, which has always bothered him and made him doubt if he was ever normal. Junior feels as if he is split into two. Since he switched from an all-Indian school to an all-white school to …show more content…
Like the Spokane Indian rules of fisticuffs (pg 61), to always fight if someone insults you, your family, or your friends, or you must always pick fights with others. But when he made the decision to move to Rearden High School, many of the tribal members, including his best friend Rowdy, made Junior feel like a traitor for leaving the reservation to go to an all-white school (chapters 7-9). In Junior's mind, he knew that switching schools would be the best option for him. On Junior’s first day at Rearden, his dad, Arnold Spirt Sr., tried helping Junior re-conceptualize his thoughts on going to a new school. Junior has faced many challenges and diverse social groups since moving to a new school. His identity is very devoted to many different tribes. Including “The tribe of basketball players.” “The tribe of cartoonists.” and “The tribe of boys who really miss their best friends.” (pg 217) Junior has many different personalities. When he is with his best friend Rowdy, when he is playing basketball with his team, when he is on the reservation with all of the other Indians, and when he moved to an all-white school as an
Modern day Native American are widely known as stewards of the environment who fight for conservation and environmental issues. The position of the many Native American as environmentalists and conservationists is justified based on the perception that before European colonists arrived in the Americas, Native Americans had little to no effect on their environment as they lived in harmony with nature. This idea is challenged by Shepard Krech III in his work, The Ecological Indian. In The Ecological Indian, Krech argues that this image of the noble savage was an invented tradition that began in the early 1970’s, and that attempts to humanize Native Americans by attempting to portray them as they really were. Krech’s arguments are criticized by Darren J Ranco who in his response, claims that Krech fails to analyze the current state of Native American affairs, falls into the ‘trap’ of invented tradition, and accuses Krech of diminishing the power and influence of Native Americans in politics. This essay examines both arguments, but ultimately finds Krech to be more convincing as Krech’s
God and the Indian is a two person play written by Drew Hayden Taylor. In this play we have a man named George that was a former priest at a residential school. We also have a lady named Johnny Indian that was a former student at said residential school. In the play Johnny accuses George of having molested her as a child. George tells Johnny that she is delusional and will not admit to his wrongdoings. The author tells the story from both George and Johnny’s sides. I think what the author is really trying to portray here is the denial of the people that worked in the name of the church at residential schools years after they had left and/or been shut down.
It creates a statement that is made of judgement and changes the overall feeling of an individual, therefore resulting in alienation. Junior, an Indian who transferred for his own hope into a new perspective. He is facing prejudice as he enters into Reardan,a white school as someone from a different tribe. He was overseen by who he is by looks and opinions of others.In the book The Absolutely True Duary of a Part-Time Indian, the main character says,”After all, I was a reservation Indian, and no matter how geeky and weak I appeared to be, I was still a potential killer. So mostly they called me names. Lots of names” (Alexie 63). Alexie shows how Junior is defined as someone who isn’t like his peers and he was affected through the use of their one word descriptions. Junior is described as “geeky and weak” to the point whene he believed he was this label. He made himself be let down for what he is and the remarks being made. He thought he was someone that influenced people to what they think he is. Junior saw that he was a target of stimulating stereotypes based on him, yet he wasn’t able to cope with these. His feelings overlapped with getting through a school day at Reardan. Junior is being weighed down by the stereotypes implied to him that causes him to be divided. Jin who is chinese in relation to Junior’s experience has a stereotype against him.
Can you imagine growing up on a reservation full of people with no hope? The character Arnold in the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie did. In the beginning of the book, Arnold was a hopeless Native American living on a hopeless reservation. In the middle of the book, Arnold leaves the reservation and finds out that his sister left too. 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.
Adjusting to another culture is a difficult concept, especially for children in their school classrooms. In Sherman Alexie’s, “Indian Education,” he discusses the different stages of a Native Americans childhood compared to his white counterparts. He is describing the schooling of a child, Victor, in an American Indian reservation, grade by grade. He uses a few different examples of satire and irony, in which could be viewed in completely different ways, expressing different feelings to the reader. Racism and bullying are both present throughout this essay between Indians and Americans. The Indian Americans have the stereotype of being unsuccessful and always being those that are left behind. Through Alexie’s negativity and humor in his essay, it is evident that he faces many issues and is very frustrated growing up as an American Indian. Growing up, Alexie faces discrimination from white people, who he portrays as evil in every way, to show that his childhood was filled with anger, fear, and sorrow.
Growing up on a reservation where failing was welcomed and even somewhat encouraged, Alexie was pressured to conform to the stereotype and be just another average Indian. Instead, he refused to listen to anyone telling him how to act, and pursued his own interests in reading and writing at a young age. He looks back on his childhood, explaining about himself, “If he'd been anything but an Indian boy living on the reservation, he might have been called a prodigy. But he is an Indian boy living on the reservation and is simply an oddity” (17). Alexie compares the life and treatment of an Indian to life as a more privileged child. This side-by-side comparison furthers his point that
Establishing an identity has been called one of the most important milestones of adolescent development (Ruffin, 2009). Additionally, a central part of identity development includes ethnic identity (ACT for Youth, 2002). While some teens search for cultural identity within a smaller community, others are trying to find their place in the majority culture. (Bucher and Hinton, 2010)The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian chronicles Junior’s journey to discovery of self. As with many developing teens, he finds himself spanning multiple identities and trying to figure out where he belongs. “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” (p.118). On the reservation, he was shunned for leaving to go to a white school. At Reardon, the only other Indian was the school mascot, leaving Junior to question his decision to attend school he felt he didn’t deserve. Teens grappling with bicultural identities can relate to Junior’s questions of belonging. Not only is Junior dealing with the struggle between white vs. Indian identities, but with smaller peer group identities as well. In Wellpinit, Junior is th...
“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” is a humorous and intuitive novel written by Sherman Alexie. The reader gets an insight into the everyday life of a fourteen year old hydrocephalic Indian boy named Arnold Spirit, also referred to as Junior Spirit. He is living on the Spokane Indian reservation and is seen as an outcast by all the other Indians, due to his medical condition. Against all odds Arnold expands his hope, leaves his school on the reservation and faces new obstacles to obtain a more promising future at a school off the reservation. The novel is told through Arnold’s voice, thoughts, actions and experiences. Alexie incorporates one point of view, different themes and settings, such as poverty, friendship, Spokane and Reardan within Arnold’s journey to illustrate the different hardships he must overcome to gain a higher education.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie is a novel about Arnold Spirit (Junior), a boy from the Spokane Indian Reservation who decides to attend high school outside the reservation in order to have a better future. During that first year at Reardan High School, Arnold has to find his place at his all-white school, cope with his best friend Rowdy and most of his tribe disowning him, and endure the deaths of his grandmother, his father’s best friend, and his sister. Alexie touches upon issues of identity, otherness, alcoholism, death, and poverty in order to stay true to his characters and the cultures within the story. Through the identification of the role of the self, identity, and social behavior within the book, the reader can understand Arnold’s story to a greater depth.
Everyone struggles with identity at one point in their life. It will eventually happen to everyone. Identity is how people see one another, it is one of the most important things about someone. Identity goes hand in hand with experience. One’s experiences can impact one’s identity. In Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, the main character Arnold, also known as Junior, has many health issues, and notably stands out in the crowd. It does not help that he is a poor Indian boy that lives on a Reservation, and that he decides to go to an all white high school. Many of his experiences at school, and on the Reservation impact his identity. Experience is the most influential factor in shaping a person’s identity because
He goes through the struggles of deciding who he wants to be and who he is. He lived on a reservation with his family and attended the school there. He decided one day the only way he would go anywhere in life was if he were to attend Reardan, an all-white school. Here, Junior was forced to find who he really was. Junior experienced more struggles and tragedies than any white student at this school. He had to fight through the isolation he first experienced to building up the courage to play in a basketball championship. I believe that every event Junior wrote about throughout the novel had an important purpose, and even more importantly, could be related to sociology. As I read the novel, I constantly thought about questions such as the following: What importance does he have to write about this? Could I relate this to my life? Who is Alexie’s audience? Could anyone read this novel and learn something from it? By the time I completed the novel, I could answer all of these questions without a
Ever wondered what gets readers hooked on a book? In “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie, the authors have many ways to grab the reader's attention by using many techniques from humor to emotional and traumatic suspense. In the book, the main character named Junior is an Indian boy growing up on a reservation. By growing up on the reservation junior makes a choice to leave the reservation and go to a white school which gives Junior obstacles in his life. There are many obstacles that happen even before Junior decided to go to another path with his life.
People need to create a balance of stories and tell them from many different perspectives so that a more accurate picture can be shown of what is actually happening in today's society. In Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, the main character Junior is automatically judged as soon as he gets into school his first day at Reardan, the closest school off the rez. This teenage character is made fun of because of his skin color, background, abilities and culture. Arnold Spirit Junior has to overcome challenges with people assuming things about him because he is an Indian from the Spokane Reservation.
The book “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian” by Sherman Alexie tells about how Junior feels as a part-time Indian in Wellpinit and a part-time white boy at Reardan high school. Junior was an outcast, he had no friends, all he had in common with others was basketball. At the end of the story, Junior cames to accept the two places as home. In the beginning, Junior was is outcast in both Wellpinit and at Reardan High school.
Junior’s Struggles Through Mental Health Sherman Alexie wrote, “I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats” (Alexie 6). Junior, the main character in the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, uses cartoon drawings as a coping mechanism. He is a teenage boy who lives on the Spokane reservation. In the novel, he transfers to Reardan High School outside the reservation, it’s a white school. Throughout the book, Junior continuously suffers with poor mental health and his self image due to poverty, bullying, family issues, and death.