Diary Of A Part-Time Indian

In the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian written by Sherman Alexie, a character named Arnold, otherwise known as Junior shows persistence and resilience throughout the book. Junior demonstrates persistence and resilience by finding a way to go to school even if it is hard to, playing a basketball game even with an injury, and he is born in a poor environment and he still manages to pull through.

Although we never fully discover the humanness of Arnold, one thing is for sure, “He invites fear rather than attraction when he claims to know things about her family and neighbors that he couldn’t possibly know.”(SparkNotes Editors)

In the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, other than attending Reardan, Arnold Spirit made his most important choice in trying out for the Reardan basketball team. This is evident when Arnold states this: “I almost didn't t try out for the Reardan basketball team. I just figured I wasn't good enough to make even the C squad. And I didn't want to get cut from the team. I didn't think I could live through that humiliation” (Alexie 135). This quote is important because Arnold proves to himself that he can and will be successful. When he made the team, he did not just prove to himself that he can be successful, but he showed the members on the reservation that it is possible to be successful no matter where someone is from.

The reader’s first impression of Arnold Friend is a regular-looking teenager with a bold attitude, lusting after Connie. He is of average height, wearing faded jeans and a white t-shirt, and is persuading Connie to get into his car with him. He is compelling

One thing me and Arnold both experienced was being bullied about being Native American. When Arnold went to Reardan, an all-white school he was bullied for his skin color and were he came from. Throughout grade school I was bullied about my last name. My last name is pronounced Begaye (Be-gaye) and it comes from a Native American background. In school my classmates would always laugh about my last name, it’s because it had “gaye” in it. They would say “Hey Makayla are you gay?” or “Makayla you look gay today”, this would happen to me daily. Arnold and I started to hate being native American.

Arnold Spirit finds himself with a split personality, after living what some critics would call a double life. From going to school at Reardan and living and sleeping on the Rez, he puts himself in a state of liminality. No one on the Rez has ever done what Arnold Junior has done before, therefore Junior has guidance to know how to handle how he is feeling, or expect how to be treated when he enters this journey of finding hope. When Junior first decides to leave the Rez to find hope he does not fully realize the full repercussions that it will cause not only him, but the relationships he has with friends and family. His identity slowly gets stripped away from him, when he looses sight of what he left the Rez for, hope, but when he remembers

Arnold Spirit Jr is a courageous character who scarifies his identity to achieve better opportunities in life to reach his dreams. According to the novel, “I want to go to Reardan, I said” Arnold wants to have a better future than most of the Indians on his reservation. Most of the people on the reservation have lost all hope of their dreams, but not Arnold he still has that hope his future would be different. The people on the reservation see their dreams floating further and further away, Arnold can see his dreams coming a closer towards him. In “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” the conflict that forces Arnold to make a decision to impact his future is whether he should stay at the reservation and not get the best education

In the beginning of the novel, Arnold's teacher, Mr. P. is talking to Arnold about his experiences as a teacher. He describes many of the terrible things he has done to Native American students and says: "We were supposed to make you give up being Indian. Your songs and stories and language and dancing. Everything. We weren't trying to kill Indian people. We were trying to kill Indian culture." (35). This shows the reader what the Indian reservation schools were actually for; to transform Indian students into 'Normal Americans' by stripping them of their Indian cultures. Later in the novel when Arnold confronts a teacher at his new school about petrified wood, the teacher treats Arnold as an outcast who is not educated enough to speak out loud in class. The smartest white student in the class raises his hand and confirms that Arnold is correct, and the teacher thanks him, ignoring Arnold. This shows the reader that Natives are discriminated against. Arnold first made the correction but the white student was thanked while Arnold was ignored because he was an Indian

After Arnold Jr’s decision to transfer to Reardan school, he faces the consequences of being hated by Indians by his best friend and races white people in Reardon school. Arnold wants to get out of reservation to peruse a better life and better future so he transfers to Reardon school in white community. After his decision most of the people in reservation starts to hate him, they look at him as traitor. Even his best friend Rowdy turns into his worst enemy he starts to hate him he even punch’s him in the face. When finally, he goes to school in his first day all the student stared at him because he was not white

“Jeez, I felt like one of those Indian scouts who led the U.S. Cavalry against other Indians” (182), Arnold says when he is playing basketball against his old Indian school with his new all white school. This is in the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. This quotation in the book is important because it talks about Arnold’s struggle to feel like he fits in as white or Indian.

Arnold for being Indian and from being from a Rez is not thought of as highly or intelligent. “Yes, we all know there’s so much amazing science on the reservation” (Alexie 85). This sarcastic comment from one of Arnold's teachers that tells he should be stupid; but Arnold disproves him by knowing more about fossilization then the teacher. A “joke” from Roger: “Did you know that Indians are living proof that niggers fuck buffalo?” (64). This shows how lowly the Indians are thought of and trudged on by the whites of society, from their knowledge to their status as

Many people use humor to manage miserable situations in their life. In the book, The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian, Junior works through many tough situations using humor. He works through situations such as death, poverty, and conflict. This essay will show how Junior manages all of these situations using humor.

“I was born with water on the brain” (Alexie 1), Sherman Alexie starts his novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. His first sentence explains it all; the main character of his book, Arnold Spirit Junior, is not an ordinary boy. Junior was born with a rare condition called Hydrocephalus; it made him prone to seizures, brain damages and to get picked on and bullied. However, the same impairment makes him a fighter. He fights off his brain surgery, seizures and the bullies. He fights for hope and to survive. Not just his disability, Junior was also different because of his skin color and his poverty-stricken family. Nevertheless, the differences motivates him to strive for more. If he was not any different from the other

In pages 54 to 129. Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian By Sherman Alexie discusses his change in life wonderful experience moving from REZ (reservation) school to Reardon. On Junior first day of school in Reardon, he met a beautiful girl Penelope and who he really liked. When he was new at the school, he gets insulted by student whose name was Roger. Arnold gets irritated with the bullying so he punched Roger on his nose and walk off. That night grandmother gave him wise advice because he was worried about next school day. On Halloween, Arnold and Penelope dressed up as a homeless people because they wanted to raise the money for homeless people. Unfortunately, Arnold got mugged for his money. Arnold sister Mary got

Two adjacent communities, one a solemn poverty ridden reservation and the other a beautiful, almost “mythical” (51) sanctuary are the settings of Sherman Alexie’s novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian which is critical to the main character’s identity crisis. Despite the establishment of most of the novel’s characters and their attributes in previous chapters, the passage above from chapter 8 started his question of belonging. The author’s decision to introduce junior’s full name in his new school illustrates the impact of the