It taught me that strength and perseverance can make a significant impact in life. I also learned that forgiveness and the ability to forgive is much more powerful than I ever realized. This novel sucked me into the story and its characters and took me on an emotional ride of highs and lows. Finally, it forced me to reevaluate my previous judgement of the homeless.
Sometimes events in your life can be difficult and frustrating but once someone of something helps you, you feel so much better. I think this book is such a moving story
To start with, the protagonist of the book, Melinda, is experiencing multiple difficult times in her life like her parents relationship is falling apart, recovering from the rape, and loneliness. Melinda has isolated herself from everyone else for so long, but also since everybody thinks she busted the party, they don’t want to have anything to do with her. As her peers at school bully her by blurting things out at her while she has a perfectly good reason why she called the police, she is afraid to stand up for herself. At the party, she was raped by Andy and didn’t know what to do after it happened, so she called the police in shock.
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.
No piece of literature should ever be ban : Of Mice and Men should not be ban from young adults and libraries. The literature classic promotes good life lessons for students to learn from such as friendship and motivation. Simply banning the book would contradict the right of free press under the first amendment of the constitutions. The book also provides a considerable amount of historical context. Even though the book contains a tremendous amount of racism , sexism , and vulgar language , in today’s media , we are exposed to a similar content.
People are cruel because they are afraid of change. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a novel that follows Junior, a 14-year-old boy living on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to receive a better education, Junior makes the bold decision to leave the reservation school and attend Reardon, a school full of white kids in a town neighboring the reservation. Many members of the community do not understand Junior’s decision and are angered by it. When Junior goes trick-or-treating on Halloween night, he experiences
Book Banning I think that the root problem with the book banning/burning was the level of maturity in the certain individuals affected. Both of these books were not made for children. I think the people in charge that banned Mr Vonnegurt’s book could have done better with their solution and the people at the Biloxi school came up with an adequate solution to the problem. An example is the book by Kurt Vonnegut, but they were still taught in the classroom.
Melinda is raped by an older boy at a party the summer before her freshman year of high school. The impacts of this event are socially and psychologically devastating for Melinda. Her declining mental health renders her physically unable to speak about being raped over the summer. She is unable to cope with her trauma, and forced to suffer alone. However, she eventually becomes empowered to speak up for herself and about her experience.
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 novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian is not simply written. The author Sherman Alexie, uses several words like articulate, hormonal, and decrepit which displays that the novel could be read by people of all ages. This novel is wonderfully written so that people of every socioeconomic status can relate to real-world problems like poverty, racism, death and substance abuse. Alexie uses simple language to convey the thoughts that are actually inside people’s minds. For instance, in the first chapter of the book, the author introduces Arnold to the world (Alexie, 2007).
In the end, his suffering paid off as his hope and dream of finding his family alive finally came true. Through the story of a young boy who treasured all his blessings in a harsh environment, I learned to value the things I have and to not waste these special
Mill, John S. "Banned and Challanged Books." Banned & Challenged Books. American Library Association, 05 Sept. 2016. Web. 12 May 2017.
The novel Speak was written by Laurie Halse Anderson, which features a girl named Melinda who is starting her first year in high school. Melinda is hated by her peers and seem to have a heavyweight surrounding her. As the story goes on the reader learns that Melinda’s depressive state is because of the traumatic experience of being raped. Throughout the novels entirety Melinda is shown attempting to take control over her life and to get through the school year in one piece. Speak gave many people the opportunity to put themselves in the place of a rape victim.
Another element in this novel is Melinda’s inner conflict, man vs. self. What Melinda has been through greatly affected her everyday life. She struggles with depression, dislikes her appearance, and feels ashamed of herself for something that isn 't her fault: “I want to confess everything, hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else...even if I dump the memory, it will stay with me, staining me” (Anderson 51). Andy Evans, the senior who raped her, made her feel worthless. This situation is much like the one in the novel The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.
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).