The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian Essay

Picture yourself in a town where you are underprivileged and sometimes miss a meal. In the novel, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” Sherman Alexie wrote the book to show hardships that Native Americans face today. Alexie shows us hardships such as poverty, alcoholism and education. In the novel, Junior goes against the odds to go to an all white school to get a better education to have a better life

In the novel Junior fights the burden of poverty in his house and at school. At his house he sometimes misses a meal or only has small amounts and at school he can not pay for anything at the dances. Alexie even says, “Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.” Therefore, Alexie does not think poverty teaches you anything, yet he is poor and has learned a lot from it. Primarily Alexie fought this difficulty by transferring from the poor reservation school to the rich, expensive school Rearden. His parents let him go because they wanted a better future for him. The importance of poverty in his life is that he could overcome it to have a better future even though most native americans can not overcome poverty.

Another battle Junior has to face is alcoholism, which he has experienced many times.

Junior says that he has been to 42 funerals and that, “About 90 percent of the deaths had been because of alcohol.” This shows that Junior should be majorly affected by alcohol because the closest people to him died because of alcohol. His sister, his grandma and Eugene have all died because of alcohol. In almost all Indian homes in his tribe someone drinks in their house. Junior overcame it by getting away from it and going to Rearden where alcoholism is not an issue. The importance of alcoholism in his life is so that he could get away and find hope although most native americans face it in their lives and do not get away from it and it becomes a problem their whole

life.

In addition native americans face the problem of lack of education. Without education no good jobs are made which means more people are poor which hurts the economy. Native americans usually do not go to college and as Junior says, “How often do you hear the words “Indian” and “college” in the same sentence?” This shows that native americans do not get the full education that they need. If they only make it through high school they can only get certain jobs which do not pay well. Also, Mr.P said to Junior, “You’re going to find more and more hope the farther and farther you walk away from this sad, sad, sad reservation.”This means that Mr. P knows how the reservation has given up hope and will not succeed so he wants Junior to leave so he can find a better education to succeed in life. The importance of education on Junior's life is that Junior finds a better education at Rearden so that he could go to college even though most native americans do not get a good education.

To close, Junior has fought and overcame many hardships that modern day native americans face including poverty alcoholism and education. He fought poverty by transferring to a rich place, he fought alcoholism by getting out and finding a place where it's not a problem and fought lack of education by finding a good education. Therefore, Junior went against the odds to beat the hardships but in real life most modern day native americans do not overcome the problems and have a hard life because of them.