Analysis Of 'The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian'

The book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian and the movie Smoke Signals are similar stories, but very different. Both of the main characters Junior and Victor are Indians that leave the reservation. Death is a huge part of both stories. In Junior’s story Eugene, his grandmother, and his sister all die. In victor’s story his father dies. The themes of the stories are different. In Junior’s story the theme is to never give up. Junior goes to Reardan in the White town to have a chance at a better life. Victor leaves the reservation to retrieve his father’s ashes. The story is more about forgiveness with Victor forgiving his father.

​Dan, a Lakota elder, has seen it all. The elder strongly speaks the truth about the “Indian” life, past and present. Dan refuses to forget and get over the historical clashes between the whites and his people. The author comes with certain expectations and mind set about the Indians, but his ideology is shattered when Dan refuses to be marked down as just another old Native American wise man. The

Have you ever lost someone you loved or was important in your life? Well Junior has, he has lost many people in his life. He has gone to a total of 42 funerals in his lifetime and he is only 14. You will find out more about Junior in the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Most of the people Junior has lost were due to alcohol. Alcohol is an epidemic within the Indian reservation as well as all over the world. There are many themes present in the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. One particular theme that is present throughout the story is that alcoholism kills and ruins lives.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian should be taught at DHS. It teaches a person about reality and about the struggles of the world, yes it uses profanity and sexual, but it shows what can happen to a teenager and showing them what could happen to them. The absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a wonderful and fantastic book. Reardan, the all white school Junior transfers to, is about 23 miles off the reservation. This means he either has to hitchhike or walk because his family can’t afford the money for gas, that could be someone in a teen in Douglas community. Not only is he the poorest kid in his new school, he’s also the only Indian, Douglas is a very mixed race school, they should let the teachers choose if the kids

Junior is a young American Indian who had grown up on a reservation in the western United States. As he grew older, he realized that living on the reservation would lead him nowhere. His only chance of hope at a better life is to leave “the Rez”. Sherman Alexie perfectly captures the culture of an American Indian in his novel, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, by introducing white culture by sending Junior to Reardan High School. Junior’s experience in Reardan allows him to draw conclusions about his own culture and Alexie has surely done research on American Indian culture. Most American Indians in today’s society live in poverty. Their culture revolves around their unwillingness to change due to their harsh treatment through

A small town Indian boy named Junior Loved his friend Rowdy as does Rowdy.But love can’t vanish can it,or is it the fact that love never existed with those.After all some say love is just a figment of your imagination,right? In the book”The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.”

Junior, a Native American child living on a reservation full of poverty has had many occurrences where the identity of the character has been trialed by a conflict in the story. Junior has been struggling throughout the novel trying to figure out his identity and where he belongs. At first, Junior tried fitting in the reservation with all the other Indians. Then he wanted to change and tried to fit in with the kids at Reardan. And lastly, he tried to figure out how to fit in with both the Natives on the reservation and kids at Reardan. Juniors struggle with identity is the critical aspect that shapes his decision to change his life and ultimately better himself.

Argument for Banning “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” Book in Middle Schools

Arnold Spirit Junior is hyper-conscious of his position inside any social group. Consequently, he is aware of what it means to be Indian versus what it means to be White, he worries about what it means to be a man (when it is acceptable for men to cry, or when boys have to stop holding hands with their friends) and how to fit in as a “freak”(p.98) who is bullied by his peers and even by some adults. A big part of Junior’s coming of age is trying to figure out the extent to which people are defined by their birth or their origins, as opposed to their individual choices. At the beginning of his story Junior states, “I was born with water on the brain” (p.1) (a reference to his own disability of hydrocephalus) and identifying his tough, irrational,

Writer Sherman Alexie has a knack of intertwining his own problematic biographical experience with his unique stories and no more than “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” demonstrates that. Alexie laced a story about an Indian man living in Spokane who reflects back on his struggles in life from a previous relationship, alcoholism, racism and even the isolation he’s dealt with by living off the reservation. Alexie has the ability to use symbolism throughout his tale by associating the title’s infamy of two different ethnic characters and interlinking it with the narrator experience between trying to fit into a more society apart from his own cultural background. However, within the words themselves, Alexie has created themes that surround despair around his character however he illuminates on resilience and alcoholism throughout this tale.

As Winston Churchill said,” Success is not final. Failure is not fatal”. It is the perseverance and hope to continue that counts. This is the story of a boy named Junior whose key is his hope. The Absolutely True Diary is the life story of a Arnold Spirit (Junior) and his efforts to break the stereotypes about Indians. He wants to become something amazing; he wants to be successful. Juniors experiences throughout the book changes him as a person and he understands that life has its ups and downs but if people have hope, they can do anything. In The Absolutely True Diary, Sherman Alexie uses literary devices, Mr.P’s advice, and Juniors experiences to illustrate the theme that perseverance and hope can lead to great things.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian has one mutual theme that associates all the other themes in the novel together. In the chapter titled; “Valentine Heart,” we encompass the most prominent and most cognisant theme of them all- grief. This chapter conveys the most detectable attributes of grief that functions as both an individual and collective process of dealing with loss. Argumentatively one could say that grieving has its fair share of adversities. That particular adversity is melancholia, which is when an individual is unable to fully recuperate from a loss and consequently their lives remain stagnant as they never seem to exit the grieving mode. This translates to the tension between mobility and immobility that each individual thus experiences. To say that there is a precise manner in which an individual should lament in would be flawed, because every individual approaches life at a different kind of lens. I will be discussing this in terms of the causes and the consequences of grief and the detailed ways in which the individuals deal with the grief.

In his book the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie portrays a teenage boy, Arnold Spirit (junior) living in white man’s world, and he must struggle to overcome racism and stereotypes if he must achieve his dreams. In the book, Junior faces a myriad of misfortunes at his former school in ‘the rez’ (reservation), which occurs as he struggles to escape from racial and stereotypical expectations about Indians. For Junior he must weigh between accepting what is expected of him as an Indian or fight against those forces and proof his peers and teachers wrong. Therefore, from the time Junior is in school at reservation up to the time he decides to attend a neighboring school in Rearden, we see a teenager who is facing tough consequences for attempting to go against the racial stereotypes. The decision to attend a white school is a tough one and Junior understands that for him to survive and to ensure that his background does not stop him from attaining his dreams; he must battle the stereotypes regardless of the consequences. In this light, race and stereotypes only makes junior stronger in the end as evident on how he struggles to override the race and stereotypical expectations from his time at the reservation to his time at Rearden.

Overcoming a challenge, not giving up, and not being afraid of change are a few themes demonstrated in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Perhaps the most prominent theme derived from the novel is defying the odds, or in other words rising above the expectations of others. Junior Spirit exemplifies this theme throughout the entirety of the book. As Junior is an Indian, he almost expects that he will never leave the reservation, become an alcoholic, and live in poverty like the other Indians on the reservation—only if he sits around and does not endeavor to change his fate. When Junior shares the backstory of his parents, he says that his mother and father came from “poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people” (11). He knows that if his parents were not born into poverty, his mother would have gone to college, and his father would have become a musician. Additionally, on page eleven Junior says that his parents “dreamed about being something other than poor, but they never got the chance to be anything because nobody paid attention to their dreams.” Junior believes that he is trapped in this “circle” of poverty, and his dreams will be ignored just as his parents’ dreams had been. However, after Junior launches an old geometry book across a classroom, and it hits his teacher, Mr. P, in the face, Mr. P realizes something substantial about Junior: He has fought since his birth, beginning with the

There are main themes in every novel some may be obvious while some require research and analysis to find. In The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, there are many themes such as bullying, racism, drug abuse and alcoholism. Though only a few of those apply directly to Junior, the protagonist, there is one that he is affected by more than any other. This one is isolation.