The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian is a novel for young adults by Sherman Alexie, illustrated by Ellen Forney and was published in September 12, 2007. This novel is a first person narrative by a Native American teenager Arnold Spirit Jr, also known as Junior. In this essay I will be emphasising mainly on the root cause of physical and psychological violence in the text and how Arnold represents and comes to terms with violence in his life. Junior is a 14 year old budding Indian cartoonist who lives in the Spokane Indian Reservation and schools at the reservation. He was born with a hydrocephalus and because of that he is very small for his age and suffers seizures, stuttering, lisping and poor eye sight. He is always been picked …show more content…
The poverty of this family is seen in an early stage where Juniors’ dog had to be killed by his father because they couldn’t afford to take him to the veterinarian after he suffered a stroke. ‘’I wanted to hate my mom and dad for our poverty, I wanted to blame them for my sick dog and for all the other sickness in the world’’. Junior was raging with hatred and anger because of the poverty he was born in. Page 11 Junior has only one friend named Rowdy, Rowdy is physically abused at home and as a result he ends up being a bully at school. He stands up for Junior in every situation though he sometimes don’t understand Juniors decisions and thinks he is an idiot. Going to school at Reardan was one of the decisions that Rowdy thought was idiotic and stupid and he felt like strangling Junior instantly. Indians from the Reservation have the notion that Indians should stick together as one no matter what, and they should not leave the Reservation regardless of any situation. This notion again creates violence as Junior decided to go to an all-white school at Reardan Washington and he was encouraged by his high school teacher but he gets hated for his decision. And yet again violence is seen as a communication skill in the reservation as people understand more when violence has influenced some things or
Hope kept the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Times Indian from ending in misery and hatred. Junior’s hope grows throughout the story, even as he faces the harsh reality of life. Limitations in the form of poverty, death, physical disabilities, and bullying plague him. While Junior’s future of the reservation appeared bleak, hope for a better future played an important role in Junior’s decision to transfer to Reardan High School.
“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, written by Sherman Alexie, is a novel describing a 14 year old’s journey throughout high school. In the story, Junior, the main character, is faced with multiple obstacles in his life: Hydrocephalus, poverty, and the target of bullying. Despite the world being against him, Junior’s multiple traits helps him greatly when it comes to the adversity that accompanies his migration from the Wellpinit Reservation to Rearden.
In ''The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian'', Arnold spirit, who is an Indian boy, lives on a Spokane Indian Reservation with alchoholic parents. Adding to that, he is a hydrocephalic, which has affected his speaking ability and he had to deal with being bullied and getting picked on in school. However, he wants to overcome these challenges and move on in life to something better, because he is dissatisfied with the situation he is in. Later in the story, he decides to go to a white school where he begins feeling like a part-time indian.
Growing up on a reservation where almost everyone has lost hope, Junior feels like an outcast for having a passion to chase after his dreams. When he moves to Reardan to find hope, he is gawked at and teased because he is the only Indian there. Junior faces internal conflicts within himself figuring out how to balance his two selves. According to Junior, “traveling between Reardan and Wellpinit, between the little white town and the reservation, [he] always felt like a stranger. [Junior] was half Indian in one place and half white in the other. It was like being Indian was [Junior’s] job, but it was only a part-time job. And it didn’t pay well at all” (Alexie 118). Junior is determined to discover his identity as it is evident in his choice of words. Feeling like a stranger wherever he goes, he believes that he is too white for the reservation while being too Indian for Reardan. The people on the reservation live in an atmosphere where they trust only each other and stick up for one another. However, when Junior goes to the reservation after being exposed to a community filled with white people, the Spokane’s do not see him as a true Indian anymore, hence the reason why Junior
Do you think looking forward and trying to change a bad situation into a good one for having a better life is a wrong decision? The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian is a novel written by Sherman Alexie. The novel is about Arnold Spirit; everyone calls him Junior. He is a teenage boy with a tough life who lives with his family in poverty on a Spokane Indian reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. He hates living in poverty and wants something better for himself. “I feel like I might grow up to be somebody important. An artist”(6) he claims. His living conditions are horrible; he studies in a school with a lack of resources. He considered the different aspects of moving to Reardan, he struggled about leaving
In the novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part time Indian”, author Sherman Alexie shares a compelling story representing racial issues among communities and families in cultural areas today, and a boy’s journey to find who he truly is, while being torn between two cultures. In this novel the main character, young Junior finds himself truly understanding that he is more than just an indian. In order to know more about the plot behind the novel, author Alexie takes the reader into Junior’s perspective to bring the story to life and let the reader understand how racial issues along with family problems make a play into today’s society. The novel shows a countless number of situations Junior encounters that impact his life throughout the novel.
Survival is a very important part of any life and survival is a culmination of all the driving forces behind our success. The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian explores this concept closely. This exposition will be arguing that survival is in fact a large part of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and shows that through many different facets, it will also be showing some examples of this and defining further how this correlates to this concept.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a book that depicts cultural differences; the issues of alcohol; and friendships in a harsh, yet humorous way. Junior, the main character of the book, stands out in many ways, both to the reader, and in the book itself. He is courageous, yet also emotional and smart.
In Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) a teenage boy named Junior, explains his struggle of breaking the cycle of his indigenous people and moving between an Indian American reservation (the ‘rez’) and a mainstream school in a town called Reardon. The protagonist explains, through first-person accounts, his life on the reservation and his experiences as he attempts to break the cycle of alcoholism and poverty that is imposed on him merely because he is an Indigenous American. One theme that remains constant throughout the novel is that of lack of hope that the Indians have for their futures, they see no need for dreams or hopes as, for them, there is no way that they can achieve any more than any of their ancestors. Another theme that is present through Part-Time Indian is poverty and the cycle of negative events that lead to it continuing. This leads to the Indigenous Americans having no hope. An extremely broad theme that is present in this novel is identity. Junior explains very simply how being Native American leads to his peoples’ inevitable poverty. There are many aspects in Part-Time Indian where some actions and habits are considered normal.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian features two main settings, the Pacific Northwest towns of Wellpinit and Reardan. These contrasting locations – one an impoverished Indian reservation and the other an affluent white community – become very important to the ever-shifting identity of our narrator, 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
This book, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian" by Sherman Alexie, is about a boy called Arnold Spirit aka Junior. He is a Native American that lives in an Indian Reservation. He isn't really satisfied with his life, since he's pretty poor, but he gets along. He doesn't really accept himself, since he has multiple medical problems, and he has been beaten up since he was little. When he starts to gain more friends in this new (American) school, he starts to like and accept himself more than before. In this book, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian" (by Sherman Alexie), the main theme is about Arnold trying to accept himself.
Throughout the story, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Junior goes through many ups and downs. This story is about how Junior, an indian from the Spokane reservation, decides to go to Rearden, the school for non-indians because of how run-down his school is and has trouble fitting in. Some of the ways Junior dealt with those downs include his uncanny sense of humor, his love for his friends, and the want to fit in and prove he’s just as good as everyone else at his new school.
First off Junior struggled with his education. For example Junior goes to his first day of school but, soon finds
Arnold/Junior Spirit is a fourteen year old Spokane Indian who lives on a small reservation in Washington state. In the book The Absolutely True Diary of a part-Time Indian, Junior leaves his reservation for a primary white school called Reardan to find hope. He struggles with friendships, family, basketball, school work and identity through the year. His experiences on and off the reservation, are constantly changing his beliefs to become less racist and more positive. For example, Junior begins thinking that hope is barely reachable for him, but ends the book realizing that nothing stops him from having hope except how much he works for it.