Life is something that requires a significant amount of physical and mental effort. Some are deeply fortunate to have everything arranged for them and not have a single worry. For others, life is full of stress and hardships. It all just depends on how one was raised and brought into this world. Out of the Rick Bragg articles, the characters went through grief and heartache, government involvement, and the absence of life’s given moments.
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.
Circumstances surrounding the unexpected death of a loved one often add to the traumatic impact upon the bereaved and those left in deaths wake. Grief is a universal human experience. Most people will be confronted with the death of a loved one at some point in their lives. The grief response is unique from person to person (Cutcliffe, 1998). Despite the abundance of research studies that exist pertaining to grief, there is still little understanding of how grief is exhibited in the human experience and how healthcare professionals can best care for those who grieve (Reed, 2003).
In the short story, “Blood Knots” grief is revealed in different ways. In the beginning of the story the main character is described as calm and laid back. This gives the reader the sense that she does not care for her father’s death and she announces, “I am still waiting for my own emotion to surface in what I am anticipating will be a sense of overwhelming, loss”(Burton 33). The main character is in great shock that even she cannot describe it. It gives the reader the sense that the main character may be experiencing some depression because as it is stated she is waiting for her feelings to surface, and she might be feeling down that she is not reacting as normal people should be. She is convincing herself that she is not worthy and she doesn’t love her father, even though on the inside she loves him . The main character needs to realize that she is taking it in her own way. Furthermore, the second grief in the story is 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.
Argument for Banning “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” Book in Middle Schools
In J. D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye, the coming of age archetype is inevitable, as the protagonist matures greatly throughout his physical journey. Holden started off as as sad as night, with aimlessness, pain and depression. He did not pretend the process of mourning was simple, and blind his eyes to the difficulty of accepting the loss of his brother. However, the truth is divulged here, proving to mourn, as painful and mentally agonizing. He could not easily move on with his life, go to school and make friends, when Allie was gone, forever. Dark thoughts spiraled out of control in the protagonist’s mind, constantly disrupting his state of tranquility, giving way to his physical journey. Grieve caused this dispatched sense of
“You remember what you want to forget and you forget what you want to remember,” (McCarthy 12). With most aspects of life, the horrendous moments are the times that no one can erase. This applied to The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Towards the end of the novel when the son loses his father proves to be the most indelible moment with the assistance of the feelings experienced during that part. The son encounters a variety of emotions including loneliness, loss and hope. In enduring these complex emotions, this section was the most remarkable part.
cannot let go of her father’s corpse. The author also brings out the theme of suffering from
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
When people are traumatized by an event they are pushed to experience the five stages of grief. The “Gospel”, by Philip Levine and “the boy detective loses love”, by Sam Sax both use characters that are going through one of the stages of grief. Levine and Sax both explain the thoughts and process of what a person thinks when they go through these stages with imagery. Levine uses symbolism, a sad tone, and a set setting in “Gospel” to illustrate that grieving takes you into a depth of thoughts. Sax uses anaphoras, an aggressive tone, and an ambiguous setting to convey that grieving takes you into a tunnel of anger and rage.
“Grief is an element. It has its own cycle like the carbon cycle, the nitrogen. It never diminishes not ever. It passes in and out of everything” (Heller 115). Throughout tragedy primal values come to the surface of even the most civilized people. These types of intense feelings come from one of two places: fear or desperation. Throughout The Dog Stars by Peter Heller, Hig takes on roles on the dealing and receiving ends of new primal directives as protector and intruder while on his journey to and from Grand Junction. Cima and her father responded to Hig’s intrusion with the same unfinished emotion that Hig and Bangley possess when people intrude on their respective hangar and home. Both groups encompass fear and desperation through their
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.
The Management of Grief was a very interesting story, yet it was sad at the same time. This story was based on and actual event that took place in India. Shalia lost her husband and two kids. They was killed in an crash. Her boys had radios and made breakfast for her some mornings. Shalia was 36 years old Indian woman with two kids and a husband. Losing her family was very devastating to her. Shalia was very
Worden (2008) has proposed four headings under which complicated grief reactions can be categorized. The first process, chronic grief, in which the typical grief reactions continue for an excessive period of time without coming to a proper conclusion, The second heading of grief, delayed occurs some period of time after trauma or death. Heading three exaggerated grief, in