IDENTITY
No one has an identity from the beginning. No one is born already knowing who they will be when they grow up, and what life path they will follow. You are born without really knowing what world you are going into. You have to sculpt your identity, who you want to be, from scratch. Junior also has to do this. He was born a weak kid with water in his brain, which caused large scale brain damage. He was also very poor and without much support. However, Junior always wanted to move beyond his disadvantages. He forms his identity through his own strength and the help of others.
Junior fought through being disabled from birth. He overcame the obstacle of being poor. He even overcame the obstacle not knowing who he really is and what he
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pg 52.
In this scene from the book you see Junior who cares so much about his past and his best friend. His identity is rooted in his past. At the same time, Junior is trying to tell Rowdy that he, Junior, needs more opportunity than what he can accomplish on the rez. It is a very emotional scene, showing a change in identity. Junior wants to be himself, but also to go out and to seize amazing opportunities beyond the reservation. Junior decides to do both. He stays on the rez, but also commits to going to school in Reardan, an all-white town outside the reservation.
People aren’t born strong - they become strong. Junior throughout the book grows and becomes stronger as a person. His self-esteem goes up, and he feels like he can really do more. In the beginning of the book he doesn’t believe in himself he doesn’t think he is going to make it to Reardan, or make the basketball team. By the end of the book he realizes how much he has done. He has not only made it through Reardan high school, but he has flourished there. Amazingly, he gets all A grades and becomes the star on his basketball team. Though everyone else sees how strong Junior is, he still needs to prove that he is stronger than he thinks to himself. This is what he says to a reporter before his big basketball game, Reardan vs. Wellpinit, with Rowdy, his former best friend, as the all-star of the Wellpinit