The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Essay

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said “First you take a DRINK then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.” Later Fitzgerald capitulated and died of a heart attack due to being an alcoholic the last 2 years of his life. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian written by Sherman Alexie talks about a 14 year old Indian boy changing his life. He goes to a white school, and changes into a different person throughout the story. The story talks about other real life dilemmas, like death and alcohol. There are multiple themes that are present throughout the story, but one theme that protrudes is that alcoholism kills.

Throughout the story, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Junior goes through many ups and downs. This story is about how Junior, an indian from the Spokane reservation, decides to go to Rearden, the school for non-indians because of how run-down his school is and has trouble fitting in. Some of the ways Junior dealt with those downs include his uncanny sense of humor, his love for his friends, and the want to fit in and prove he’s just as good as everyone else at his new school.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a book that depicts cultural differences; the issues of alcohol; and friendships in a harsh, yet humorous way. Junior, the main character of the book, stands out in many ways, both to the reader, and in the book itself. He is courageous, yet also emotional and smart.

At first Junior didn't like himself; he was constantly beaten up, he had a lisp and stuttered so he had no self-confidence. When he made the decision to go to Reardan, a white school, even Rowdy left him. Rowdy thought Junior was betraying their school by going away and transferring so Rowdy didn't talk to Junior anymore. Without his best friend, Junior completely lost hope. He was scared of the white people and did not expect them to welcome him. He was right. Most of the Americans were cold to him and he did not try to raise his status. Many of the white people made fun of him, and when one guy, Roger, said "Did you know that Indians are living proof that niggers f*** buffalo?" (pg. 64) he felt that he had to stop it. So he punched him. Junior was expecting to get punched back, but he didn't. In the Indian Reservation, he

Junior the protagonist of True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie is currently struggling with an abundance of issues ranging all the way from a poverty driven home to medical issues he was born into. It seems to me, that all of juniors problems he was born into and unable to change for example he was born into poverty and he was born indian, setting him up for the racism he would soon enough face and he was born with too much cerebral fluid in his brain. That's not to say all of his problems came along with birth and he was just born to be plagued with, but majority of them stemmed from birth.

Arnold/Junior Spirit is a fourteen year old Spokane Indian who lives on a small reservation in Washington state. In the book The Absolutely True Diary of a part-Time Indian, Junior leaves his reservation for a primary white school called Reardan to find hope. He struggles with friendships, family, basketball, school work and identity through the year. His experiences on and off the reservation, are constantly changing his beliefs to become less racist and more positive. For example, Junior begins thinking that hope is barely reachable for him, but ends the book realizing that nothing stops him from having hope except how much he works for it.

Mentors are people who provide support, strength, and inspiration. Many people have a mentor in their life that they aspire to be like, and seek out for guidance. Mentors play a big role in many lives, including Junior's from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Some of the biggest mentors for Junior are his parents, his Wellpinit teacher Mr. P and his Rearden basketball coach. If it weren't for these mentors inspiration and support, Junior wouldn't have taken some of the risks he does.

Poverty hits children hardest in the world. When I was younger, the Armenians had faced the hard facts of poverty after they break up with the Soviet Union, war with Azerbaijan, and a devastating earthquake. My family moved into our motherland Armenia while our nation was going through these huge dramatic changes. Furthermore the poor economy and inflation destroyed numerous hopes and futures. In the novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, Arnold Spirit, describes his hardships involving poverty living on Spokane reservation. The people on the reservation are stuck in a prison of poverty. They are imprisoned there due to lack of resources and general contempt from the outside world, so they are left with little chance for success. Like Arnold, I also went through hardships regarding poverty and education.

School and education was a big topic in Sherman Alexie’s, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, as the author reflects his personal life story into the protagonists’ story in the book. In the novel, Junior is a teenage kid who loves to read, but every time he goes to school in the Spokane reservation, he notices the poor education that is offered. From unmotivated teachers, to using the same textbook his own mother used to use, he knew he would end up like everyone else at the reservation, depressed, having low paying jobs, not motivated to make a change in the world. In order to be able to go to college, he knew he had to study at a high school outside of his reservation, because he would not have the education the college demanded if he stayed. During his years at the new high school away from his home, he missed a lot of school days due to funerals and ceremonies he had to attend back in his reservation. Even if Junior understood that, going to college might be difficult to do so if he was going to be attending the events at his reservation, he knew he was able to go to college from the education he gained at the new high school he attended. Similar to the article by Guillory and Wolverton, Junior, or Alexie, were able to attend college because of the high school transfer, which gained them higher quality education. Something not many Native American teenagers have the opportunity to do so, or the self-motivation, as they are still, more than likely, accepting

Do you think looking forward and trying to change a bad situation into a good one for having a better life is a wrong decision? The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian is a novel written by Sherman Alexie. The novel is about Arnold Spirit; everyone calls him Junior. He is a teenage boy with a tough life who lives with his family in poverty on a Spokane Indian reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. He hates living in poverty and wants something better for himself. “I feel like I might grow up to be somebody important. An artist”(6) he claims. His living conditions are horrible; he studies in a school with a lack of resources. He considered the different aspects of moving to Reardan, he struggled about leaving

Over the course of your life, you come to struggle with the philosophical idea of personal identity; the thing that makes you, you. Oneself may shape their identity around aspects of their life that they have no control over like race and physical traits, as well as decisions that are made throughout their lives like affiliations and religion. Your personal identity can be seen through your passions and interactions with others. An individual’s search for their identity is something that may occur in everyone’s’ life. In the novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie highlights the theme of how the search for identity is always prevalent, through the conflicted characters of Junior and Mary throughout the novel.

In Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) a teenage boy named Junior, explains his struggle of breaking the cycle of his indigenous people and moving between an Indian American reservation (the ‘rez’) and a mainstream school in a town called Reardon. The protagonist explains, through first-person accounts, his life on the reservation and his experiences as he attempts to break the cycle of alcoholism and poverty that is imposed on him merely because he is an Indigenous American. One theme that remains constant throughout the novel is that of lack of hope that the Indians have for their futures, they see no need for dreams or hopes as, for them, there is no way that they can achieve any more than any of their ancestors. Another theme that is present through Part-Time Indian is poverty and the cycle of negative events that lead to it continuing. This leads to the Indigenous Americans having no hope. An extremely broad theme that is present in this novel is identity. Junior explains very simply how being Native American leads to his peoples’ inevitable poverty. There are many aspects in Part-Time Indian where some actions and habits are considered normal.

The limitations placed on Junior, a disabled, poor, Indian boy, were endless. But Junior had the guts to go against society’s restrictions, making him braver than anyone else on the reservation. One example is when he talks about his dreams

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie is a novel about Arnold Spirit (Junior), a boy from the Spokane Indian Reservation who decides to attend high school outside the reservation in order to have a better future. During that first year at Reardan High School, Arnold has to find his place at his all-white school, cope with his best friend Rowdy and most of his tribe disowning him, and endure the deaths of his grandmother, his father’s best friend, and his sister. Alexie touches upon issues of identity, otherness, alcoholism, death, and poverty in order to stay true to his characters and the cultures within the story. Through the identification of the role of the self, identity, and social behavior

Adolescents experience a multitude of physical, cognitive, emotional, and social, and mental changes during a short span of years in their developmental journey to adulthood, and this transition period is full of many developmental changes and milestones. Some typical changes and milestones in an adolescent’s life include puberty, learning to drive, dating, developing new social relationships and social roles, cognitive changes, becoming sexually active, obtaining employment, and graduating high school. In addition to all of these changes in this tumultuous time of life, adolescents are identifying, developing, and coming to terms with their own sense of self, and learning about their identity becomes a priority. Teens and young adults must also address certain challenges that may arise in their lives such as bullying, drug and alcohol use, violence, sexual abuse, eating disorders, depression or other mood/mental health issues, and issues concerning sexuality, and gender identity. Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is an engaging story that deals with many of the challenges that all adolescents face, and this novel also addresses challenges that are unique to those teens who may be grappling with issues that face minority cultures and communities as well.