The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian According to the article Graduation Rates Dropping Among Native American Students written by Kelsey Sheehy, About half of Native american students in the class of 2012 earned a high school diploma. In this novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, the main character changes as the story moves forward. Our main character is a Native American called Junior who lives on a reservation. Junior is often bullied, and only has one friend, Rowdy. One day when Junior’s math teacher tells him that he is too talented for the reservation school, he decides to transfer to the all-white school. Junior never had high expectations set for him, he overcomes his circumstances …show more content…
After talking to his math teacher, Junior goes to talk to his parents. ‘“Come on,” I said. “Who has the most hope?” “White people,” my parents said at the same time. That’s exactly what I thought they were going to say, so I said the most surprising thing they’d ever heard from me. “I want to transfer schools,” I said.”’ (45) Junior knows that white people have more hope, and after his teacher explains to him that he can do better than the reservation school, he decides to change schools. He changes from a nobody to the person who was hopeful enough to leave the reservation. “‘You’ve been fighting since you were born,” he said. “You fought off that brain surgery. You fought off those seizures. You fought off all the drunks and drug addicts. You kept your hope. And now, you have to take your hope and go somewhere where other people have hope.” I was starting to understand. He was a math teacher. I had to add my hope to someone else’s hope. I had to multiply hope by hope.” (43) This quote kind of goes with the last quote. The teacher lets Junior know that he can succeed in life because he has fought his whole life. The hope Junior gets from the teacher changes him from not expecting much of his future to changing to an excellent