To drive back and forth between two identities The absolutely true diary of a part time Indian has two main settings, the Pacific Northwest towns of Wellpinit and Reardan. The contrast of the two different settings, a poor Indian reservation on the one hand and a wealthy white community on the other, has a lot to say for the main character in the book, Arnold Spirit Jr. There can be a lot behind to main settings in a book, and that is what I am going to analyze in this essay. The book is about a Native American teenager named Arnold Spirit Jr. Junior was born with water on the brain. He likes drawing cartoons and expressing himself in that way. He lives in a town called Wellpinit, with his father, mother, sister and grandmother. They also have a dog named Oscar. We get quite early in the story told that they are very poor, because on page 9-14 in the book, his family is too poor to afford veterinary care to Oscar. It is a lot of talk about poverty in the book. Junior also says “Poverty doesn`t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how …show more content…
Reardan located twenty-five miles away from the reservation. In Reardan, Arnold is known by his first name “Arnold”, and not his last name “Junior”. On page 83 in the book, it is said that the white people did not talk to him, but just looked at him and that him walked from class to class alone. So at first, they judged him because he was Indian and he did not look like them. At page 109, Arnold and Penelope become friends. When the other people in Reardan saw that she respected him, the other people gradually began to respect him too. Though Reardan is a place where Arnold should find the hope and realize his dreams, we hear that Reardan is pretty overrated. Penelope describe Reardan as a place where people have “small ideas” and “small dreams” and she also said that “They all want to marry each other and live here forever” (page