Analysis Of The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian

In the poem “Spirit in Me” by Esther G. Belin,and the novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie both characters share similar life experiences such as effects from alcoholism that affect their lives negatively. Everyone in life has a goal they need to reach and to reach your goal you might have to go through emotional times and so did Junior from the book and the speaker from the poem.

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.

Published in 2007, “The Absolutely True Diary of Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie says about the moving story of a Native American teenager named Arnold Spirit who made the bold decision to attend an all-white high school from Spokane reservation to find hope for the future in the Reardan. This volume won the National Book Award in 2007 and won several other awards. Even though this novel can be power of education, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” paperback should be banned because this is not appropriate for middle schools.

The short story is about an Indian named Junior Polatkin and his school career from 1st grade to graduation. He had a hard time being at school and each grade, he tells us something he has learned. Junior went to school on an Indian reservation from 1st grade to 7th grade. The government tried to keep the Indians on the reservations and wants to make them more like Americans. When Junior was in first grade the government tried to make him less like an Indian and this can be seen when he said, “My hair was too short and my U.S. Government glasses were horn rimmed, ugly, and all that” (Alexie 170). In second grade Junior’s teacher Betty Towle thought that Junior was very disrespectful. However, she was not respectful to fact that Indians and their traditions like having long hair. So she tried to force Junior to cut his hair. The text said that “She sent a letter home with [him] that told [his] parents to either cut [his] braids or keep [him] home from class” (Alexie 173). The school and government tried to control the Indians and push them into a mold so they would be more like

In a few scenes of the the grades one through twelve the short story “Indian Education,” by the Native American author and filmmaker Sherman Alexie is able to show us what it is like growing up in the white, American culture. Sherman Alexie is able to give us a glimpse of the differences of what it means to be in a non-white student area that is struggling due to the effects of colonization. Even though it has been many years since the European explores “found” North America, the settlers and government continued to expand into Indian territories. The Native Americans gradually saw their land and culture diminishing as they were relocated to reservations. The feelings of oppression become obvious through the eyes of Victor, a young boy. The

The novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie retells the accounts of Junior’s coming of age. Many of his perspectives evolve in the novel including that of his reservation, Reardan and his identity. Throughout his journey he endures tough losses of loved ones but is supported by the love of his family and friends. His daunting pursuit of hope turns into much more as he discovers his true identity.

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.”

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

In life you have many choices. One of which is deciding whether or not you are going to succeed or fail in life. In other words, choosing to stay hopeful or not. In the “Absolute True Diary of a Part- Time Indian” Junior goes through many situations where hope is needed. The author Sherman Alexie puts Junior as well as other characters in situations to make those hard decisions. This story has many themes and one of the main themes is that life choice of choosing to be hopeful or not.

From the book itself "The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian," whites were prejudiced to Indians and even the Indians were prejudiced toward the main character, Arnold for switching to a white school. An example to provide that there was prejudice in the novel like when Roger and Penelope thought that people in Arnold 's reservation were rich because there were a lot of casinos in his area, but the truth was that everyone in Arnold 's reservation were alcoholics that lived in poverty. For example, like Arnold 's father, he was an alcoholic and so tired, they wouldn 't have any food to eat for dinner, and they would starve for nearly every night. And going on this, Arnold didn 't tell anybody that he was poor so he would say he was rich and it was released out when he was at the dance and he was asked if he was poor and he responded saying yes and they felt bad for him and they gave him a lift all the way to the reservation. During the book Arnold received a lot of prejudice, but he didn 't let go to the heart and the prejudice was seen as ignorance and he just dealt with it.

This cycle of dehumanization has been established for generations in the United States, especially towards Native Americans. In “Schooldays of an Indian Girl”, the author builds a base for the young narrator’s strong sense of identity. For example, she has a strong appreciation for mother nature (a central point of worship within Native American religion), she finds comfort in her traditional garments, and her use of her native language. This is seen within the introduction, as the young child, along with her peers “dreamt of roaming as freely and happily as we had chased the cloud shadows on the Dakota plains” (Zitkala-Sa 2) . Her cultural identity is immediately threatened as she enters a polar opposite environment within the missionary school. The narrator describes her first impression as, “strong glaring light in the large whitewashed room dazzled my eyes. The noisy hurrying of hard shoes upon a bare wooden floor increased the whirring in my ears” (9). Her traditional moccasins and garments are traded in for tight fitting uniforms and hard creaking shoes (23). Additionally, to the narrator's dismay, her long braided hair, a sign of pride and strength in her culture, is stripped short by the school administrators. She,” cried aloud” as she yearned for her mother's presence at this moment, yet all that was left was her vanished spirit

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.

One internal expectation for Junior was him never giving up. Junior leaving for Rearden was a part of his internal expectation of fighting against the external expectations. “I had to add my hope to somebody else’s hope. I had to multiply hope by hope” (43). He left the reservation in order to help his outcome of never giving up. Another internal expectation for Junior was him trying his best to live up to everyone’s expectations. He wanted to make people proud. “And as they expected more of me, I expected more of myself,..” (180). Everyone pinned their expectations onto Junior and he wanted to show that he can become stronger.

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.

Within Chapter 5 of Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian the main focus is on Juniour realizing he has to leave to find more hope. Firstly, Juniour gets suspended for hitting Mr.P with a book unintentionally. Secondly, a week into the suspension, Mr. P comes for a visit and although what junior did wasn't very pleasant, he forgave juniour anyway. After listening to Mr. P speak about him and his sister, Juniour begins to think about his sister Mary hiding in the basement and his dad sitting alone in his room watching tv. He then begins to realize his family is depressed. Furthermore, Mr. P makes juniour realize that he has to leave the reservation, by telling him to take his hope and go somewhere else off the reservation.