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How Is Arnold Spirit's The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian

1073 Words5 Pages

In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Arnold Spirit makes the tough decision to stop attending Wellpinit High School. Arnold was raised around reservation kids all his life and isn’t familiar with the norms of any other group of people. This move brings struggles to both him and his parents. In the novel, Arnold realizes Reardan values the education of their students more than Wellpinit and decides he is better off attending Reardan. On Arnold’s first day of school, he received his mother’s old geometry textbook that was assigned to her when she was in high school. He realized the textbook was 30 years old and the school wasn’t giving him the best education. This news was devastating for him, “My school and …show more content…

P with the book, Mr. P went to visit Arnold at his home to talk to him about aiming to search for the hope he has inside of him. Arnold had thrown the book because he had a sense of lost hope. Mr. P knew Arnold had hope because of the anger he had about the old textbooks. The students in my high school all had high hopes for themselves. Even though we came from a small town, we all hoped to be successful and make the residents of Gonzales proud. Mr. P wants to give Arnold the opportunity to have the same hope the students in my school had to succeed. He wanted to find hope away from the reservation, “‘You’re going to find more and more hope the farther and farther you walk away from this sad, sad, sad reservation’” (43). The reservation kids weren’t being taught any good, “‘The only thing you kids are being taught is how to give up”’ (42). The difference between me and Arnold in this situation is we weren’t taught to give up, instead we were motivated to pursue our …show more content…

His parents did not oppose to the idea because they believed white people were the only ones who had hope and were able to achieve their dreams. Arnold was fascinated by Reardan, “The kids in Reardan are the smartest and the most athletic kids anywhere. They are the best” (46). Unlike Arnold, I didn’t decide to leave my high school for another. He had the courage and commitment to leave Wellpinit despite what the people on the reservation would think of him. Arnold knew it would be a completely different ambience, “Reardan was the opposite of the rez” (56). I felt this way when I first decided I would be attending CSU Los Angeles because Los Angeles is a whole other city with thousands of students. I knew the education I would be receiving would be better than in high school because of the amount of resources the school

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