In the book " The absolutely true diary of a part time Indian" by Sherman Alexie, the author provides real examples of how the white world and the Indian world are different. The examples include Education, Junior himself, and living conditions. The difference between a white neighborhood and an Indian neighborhood is an Indian Neighborhood brings all the big city problems like drugs, alcohol, murder, and gangs closer together. The white neighborhoods are bigger, cleaner, more secure, and they have better schools. In some ways the reservation is better than the white neighborhoods. The crime rate is high, but the people are close. All of the Indians on the Rez kinda have to look out for each other; in the white neighborhoods people barely …show more content…
know their neighbors. But everyone in the Indian neighborhood, the Spokane tribe, they all resemble a big dysfunctional unhappy family. Junior is obviously frustrated with the lack of new school books when he states, "I was staring st a geometry book that was thirty years older than I was"(Alexie 31). What the author is trying to explain in this quote is that Wellpinit is extremely low budget. They cannot afford new books, or anything really. Obstacles like these are what held junior and his sister back from thriving and supporting their dreams. The education system in the white world is more effective than the education system in the Indian world. The students and staff at reardan care about junior more than the students and staff at Wellpinit. At Wellpinit they don't have enough money for new tech or even new books, they recycle the same books Each and every year. Going to Wellpinit will make it harder to get a job, because in order to get a job you have to know what and how to adapt to new tech. You can't get a job with zero experience. Reardan is able to provide more for their students then Wellpinit because, they have the money and the funding to do so. Junior noticed that, "The kids at Reardan are the smartest and most athletic kids anywhere"( ).Alexie wants the reader to know that it's easier for kids in the white community to get a career and go to college, junior had to work harder to achieve his goal with no help. The kids and reardan have it easy. It's almost like no one at the Rez have anything to live for, all of their lives had already been planned. Juniors realizes this when he states, " All these kids have up. We're all defeated"(Alexie 42). Junior notices a pattern. He knows nothing will change within the Rez. Junior informs the readers about the "bone crushing" truth, " In Reardan" more than half of every graduating class went to college"(Alexie 56). In this quote the author wants the reader to know what kind of school Reardan is and how it differs from Wellpinit in the ways that count. There is clearly a difference between both education systems, but there also difference between Junior in both societies. During the story junior is constantly battling with himself, trying to figure out where he belongs.
When he transferred to Reardan he immediately stood out from the others. " They stared at me, the Indian boy with the black eye and swollen nose, my going away gifts from rowdy. Those white kids couldn't believe their eyes. They stared at me Like I was Bigfoot or a UFO"( Alexie 56 ). He didn't have a single thing in common with the students at Reardan. Junior is an impoverished Indian, but that's not all there is to him. No one is a part of one group, differences are what make us people not robots. Junior came to a "huge realization", " I realized that, sure I was a Spokane Indian. I belonged to that tribe. But I also belonged to the tribe of American immigrants. And to the tribe of basketball players. And to the tribe of bookworms"( Alexie 217 ). At this point of the story Junior in resolving his inner conflict, by understanding that he can belong to more than one group. Which is a sign of growing up. Getting picked on is the norm for Junior. He said it himself, " Yep, I belong to the Black-eye-of-the-Month Club "(Alexie 4). In the Rez Junior is a nobody. He gets bullied by everyone there, including his "best friend" Rowdy. But Junior never defends himself because, the bullies are bigger and stronger. Junior was transferring from a tough community. Which automatically meant he was associated with criminals and tough guys. Junior knew what the students at Reardan …show more content…
thought of him and he used it to to his full advantage, " I felt brave all of a sudden. Yeah, maybe it was just a stupid and immature school yard fight. Or maybe it was it was the most important moment of my life. Maybe I was telling the world that I was no longer a human target "( Alexie 65 ). Junior had self-confidence for once. He was changing for the better already. Now he wouldn't get picked on at Reardan, because he could defend himself. No matter how many fights Junior gets in he'll always be different in some way, shape, or form. Throughout the story the author gives many different examples of Juniors living conditions, what he has to go through on a daily basis, and how his life is different from the students at Reardan.
For starters Money is harder to obtain in Junior's household. It takes awhile for Junior to eat, because no money means no food. "And hey, in a weird way, being hungry makes food taste better. There's nothing better than a chicken leg when you haven't eaten for ( approximately ) eighteen-and-half-hours"( Alexie 8). Alexie wants the reader to know how much of an impact money has on Junior's family. Students at Reardan don't have issues with money. "He open his wallet and handed me 40 bucks. Holy, holy. What kind of kid can just hand over 40 bucks like that"( Alexie 126 ). In this quote Junior's friend Roger is carelessly giving away money to help out a friend. To Roger money is no object. Junior never has access to money the way that Roger does. When Junior went to the school dance he couldn't even afford to buy his on suit. "But the worst thing is that I had to wear one of Dad's old suits"( Alexie 121 ). Junior is obviously different from the kids at Reardan. He doesn't have the same opportunities that they have. The students at Reardan are more fortunate. "I mean, jeez, all of the seniors on our team are going to college. All of the guys on our team had their own cars. All of the guys on our team had iPods and cell phones and PSP's and three pairs of blue jeans and 10 shirts
and mothers and fathers we went to church and had good jobs"( Alexie 195). Once again Junior is realizing the bone question truth. He figures out what winning the basketball game to the other team, his old team. To the students Reardan it was another victory, but to the students of Wellpinit it was all they had A reservation brings all big city problems into a small community where it affects everyone. At Wellpinit no student could reach their full potential, they have Old books, unencouraging teachers, and no hope. In the white neighborhood people have opportunities, people are more likely to go to college, and that means people can actually have a successful career. In the book " The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian" By Sherman Alexie, The author explains why Junior was different. She provides authentic examples of extreme poverty and how it holds you back from achieving goals. It is important for us to be aware of these inequalities because things don't always turn out the way their intended to. Sometime you have to follow your own path. You can't have a bright future if you surround yourself with dull people.
In the book Bad Indians, Miranda talks about the many issues Indigenous People go through. Miranda talks about the struggles Indigenous people go through; however, she talks about them in the perspective of Native Americans. Many people learn about Indigenous People through classrooms and textbooks, in the perspective of White people. In Bad Indians, Miranda uses different literary devices to show her perspective of the way Indigenous People were treated, the issues that arose from missionization, as well as the violence that followed through such issues. Bad Indians is an excellent example that shows how different history is told in different perspectives.
First, Junior confronts the dreariness of the Wellpinit school system by deciding to transfer to the Reardan school system. Junior initiates this decision when he throws a book across the room upon discovering his mother’s name inscribed inside the cover. His outburst signifies Junior’s recognition of Wellpinit’s misery and desire to achieve. This ambition drives his decisions throughout the novel and defines his unique character. In addition, Junior discloses his decision to his parents with fearlessness and trepidation. Junior confesses, “I want to transfer schools... I want to transfer to Reardan” (Alexie 45). Junior’s bluntness highlights his fearless personality and validates his ability to confront his problems and tasks head-on. In complex situations, Junior possesses the skills to navigate his future. Finally, Junior’s ability to overcome problems appears in his ability to navigate his way to Reardan each day for school. With the uncertainty of gas money in his family, Junior often finds himself walking or hitchhiking to the school, however
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.
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.
Not all the Indians have reservations, but all reservations have Indians. Those reservations settled at the areas usually don’t communicate with outside world a lot in more than thirty of the states. Most of reservations are poor, but there still some of them are rich. Indian lands makes up 2.3 percent of the lands in the united States. Reservation life tells its own story. Many Indians and non-Indians think this story usually is the story of tragedy. Life on the rez is hard, violent, criminal, poor and short. By thinking about what they have lost and what they have survived, the conflicts between whites and Indians are more than Indians and Indians. This is one of the hardship in Rez life. Besides all these unfortunates, the Rez life is all right.
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.
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.
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.
“I’m never going to act like my mother!” These words are increasingly common and yet unavoidable. Why is it that as children, we are able to point out every flaw in our parents, but as we grow up, we recognize that we are repeating the same mistakes we observed? The answer is generational curses: un-cleansed iniquities that increase in strength from one generation to the next, affecting the members of that family and all who come into relationship with that family (Hickey 13). Marilyn Hickey, a Christian author, explains how this biblically rooted cycle is never ending when she says, “Each generation adds to the overall iniquity, further weakening the resistance of the next generation to sin” (21, 22). In other words, if your parents mess up you are now susceptible to making the same mistakes, and are most likely going to pass those mistakes to your children. In The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie shows the beauty of hope in the presence of a generational curse. Even though the elders are the ones who produce the curses, they are also the ones who attempt to break Junior from their bond forming mistakes. The curses that Arnold’s elders imprint on him lead him to break out of his cultural bonds and improve himself as a developing young man.
The differences between whites and Indians are mentioned many of times throughout the book. For instance, when Junior went to the dentist to get his wisdom teeth removed the dentist gave him less novocaine just because he is a Native American, how messed up is that?? What kind of person would do that?? That dentist probably would have given a white person more just so that the pain wasn’t noticeable. Another example of the differences between whites and Indians is, when Junior goes into Geometry class and he gets his textbook for the first time, he looks on the inside cover and his mother's name is written in it. That means that the same textbook he has his mother had thirty years ago! That is just one example of how poor Indian reservations are, white schools can afford new textbooks every few years at the most. Furthermore, Junior ends up transferring schools to a school right off the reservation, Rearden, it's where all the white kids go who want futures for themselves. Most days Junior couldn't get a ride to and from school from his dad, so he would end up walking to school or he got lucky enough to hitch-hike. A huge difference between Native Americans and whites is, the amounts of deaths Indian culture as a whole endure. Junior had experienced a copious amount of deaths in his fourteen years of being alive, he attended 5 funerals in his life; His grandmother, sister, his dad's friend, his dog, and his sister’s husband. That is a lot of funerals to attend for a fourteen year old kid, and the average white person doesn't usually attend that many funerals in a lifetime. As an overall statement, the main effect on Junior's life is the poverty and the deaths on the
I can relate to this, not as far as race, but in a different way. At my school, there were stereotypes about the “volleyball girls”, and I was part of the volleyball team. At one point people thought this group of girls was all about partying and not school. Although, I was only focused on school and ended my high school career with only two B’s. Although this is not as an extreme case as Junior, I can still relate. In more of an extreme case, after Junior finally overcame his fear of leaving the reservation for a new and more positive life, he was not treated fairly. In the beginning of his experience at Reardan he writes, “After all, I was a reservation Indian, and no matter how geeky or weak I appeared to be, I was still a potential killer” (Alexie 2007:63). This is a perfect example of how easily people believe things they hear. Junior was literally a weak fifteen year old that could never hurt a fly, yet people looked at him as a killer because that was a stereotype about Indians. This idea goes along with Johnson’s thoughts of symbols, “symbols go far beyond labeling things” and “Symbols are also what we use to feel connected to a reality outside ourselves” (Johnson 2008: 36).
With the obstacles that happen to Junior, it creates an emotional and traumatic impact on Junior as well as getting the readers hooked to turn the page and keep reading. To begin, in “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” Sherman Alexie describes a moment in Junior's life before he went to the white school. From comparing the death rates and even mentioning the deaths, Alexie shows an emotional impact on Junior from the deaths he has to go through. Alexie writes about how Junior being an Indian has impacted his life.
Junior strives to be more than what everyone expects him to be, he wants to follow his dreams. Junior starts to show this quality to hope and dream big when he decides to leave the rez and tells his parents. “ ‘I want to go to Reardan’ I said again. I couldn't believe I was saying it. For me it seemed as real as saying ‘I want to fly to the moon.’ ”(46) Junior knows he is dreaming far beyond what any Indian on the rez ever has and gone to achieve it. Another example of Juniors aspiration shines through when he talks to Penelope, “And I couldn't make fun of her for that dream. It was my dream, too. And Indian boys weren't supposed to dream like that. And white girls from small towns weren't supposed to dream big, either. We were supposed to be happy with our limitations. But there was no way Penelope and I were going to sit still. Nope, we both wanted to fly” In this quote, Junior accepts he is reaching towards something that may be unreachable, Junior however, wants to touch the sky. Juniors aspiration and high hopes and dreams are a strong part of what makes up his
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.
When Junior went to Reardan, it was a new opportunity for him to succeed and find hope for a better future. This was beneficial for Junior because it made him put in more effort into trying to succeed and be a better student. He tried out for the basketball team, and he surprised himself, “Heck I ended up on varsity” (142). Reardan gave Junior hope by believing in him, and that gave him hope and confidence that he could make the basketball team at Reardan. At Wellpinit (his old high school on the reservation), they expected everyone to give up and not go to college, and not be successful. But at Reardan, all of the teachers expected all of the students to succeed and never give up. The two schools were polar opposites and Junior was stuck in the middle, but then Reardan gave him hope again and the path he needed for a better future, “ 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 needed me to be good. They expected me to be good. And so I became good. I wanted to live up to expectations. I guess that’s what it all comes down to. The power of expectations” (180). Since Reardan expected Junior to be successful, it encouraged Junior to try harder in school and in sports. He gained confidence because of the