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Sherman Alexie Indian Sparknotes

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Sherman Alexie’s powerful novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, investigates the concealed complexity of the Spokane Indians world. Sherman Alexie illustrates jovial humor, brutal reality, and eulogistic sadness through the pragmatic main character, Arnold Spirit Junior, to allow the reader fathom what the Native Americans are feeling. Indian reservations ― although they are home to some of the most culturally rich and spiritual people ― have had a long history of being more prison-like than a place of peace and comfort. The hopeless Indians, in modern society, that inhabit the reservations are suffering through poverty and drunk alcoholic chaos. Poverty and alcohol seem to dominate the once joyful society. The world filled …show more content…

Throughout the book we can infer that the reservation resembles a prison, “Reservations were meant to be prisons, you know? Indians were supposed to move onto reservations and die. We were supposed to disappear...Reservations were meant to be death camps.” (216-217, Alexie) Near the beginning of the story we are introduced with how the Indians feel and are followed up by Junior stating ““It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor… And because you’re Indian you start believing you’re destined to be poor. It’s an ugly circle and there’s nothing you can do about it.” (13, Alexie) Alexie brings to light the depraved and vitriolic darkness world that lies within the reservation, and knocks down the prison walls for us to grasp the didactic lives of days without clean water, food, and quality education. Those living within the reservation realize that there is very little they can do to escape the grim manipulation that is poverty. During the meek petulant times Junior attended Willpinit, the small school that resides within the reservation, he has a blithesome conversation With Mr. P about how the poverty seems to be growing as the bleak despair rises and the Spokane Indians are just giving up. “Every white person on this rez should get smashed in the face… All Indians should get smashed in the face, too. The only thing you kids are being taught is how to give up…But not you. You won’t give up.” (42-43, Alexie) At this moment, the reader is exposed to Juniors foolish yet haunting dream of escaping the impoverished realm and travel to the white

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