Symbolism In The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian

Symbolism is the use of symbols to signify ideas and qualities by giving them symbolic meanings that are different from their literal sense. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian shows a lot of symbolism ranging from Kentucky Fried Chicken to a giant pine tree. Arnold is a teenage Indian on the Spokane Reservation. He goes through a lot trying to act “normal” when he transfers to Reardan to better his life. Throughout the novel, Arnold had a lot of things that meant the world to him including his dog Oscar. Poverty is really huge being that he lived on a reservation. Basketball, Oscar, Turtle Lake, the geometry book, and the giant pine tree represents significance throughout this novel.

Basketball brings out the best in Junior. For Junior, who has grown up knowing that his race and his poverty, not to mention his physical disability, have put him at a disadvantage in the world. As he puts it, “a loser

No one, not even scientists using a small submarine, has been able to measure its depth. In this way, it represents the deep mystery that resides with the Spokane people. Junior learns a frightening story about Turtle Lake from his father. A dumb, white horse nicknamed Stupid Horse drowned in Turtle Lake, only to wash up later on the shores of another nearby lake. When some people took Stupid Horse’s carcass to the dump to burn it, Turtle Lake caught on fire and Stupid Horse’s burnt body once again appeared on its shore. In light of this story, one might argue that Turtle Lake represents the unintelligible and supernatural as they exist within nature. For many of the American Indian groups displaced by white American settlers, the body and soul, the natural and spiritual, were indivisible. Turtle Lake, and its haunting presence at the center of the Spokane Reservation, points back toward that largely lost way of seeing the world that exists deep in the memory of the Spokane