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Junior's Narrative Voice

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Following Through Junior’s Perspective: An Analysis of Junior’s Narrative Voice
Junior, the protagonist, in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a poor Indian boy looking for hope. Sherman Alexie, the author, relates to Junior. He personally lived on the Spokane Indian Reservation and knew what life is like growing up as an American Indiana. Alexie’s character’s verbal expressions are full of sarcasm and understatement. Although their lives differ, the author and the main character are connected by their mutual culture and background. Junior introduces a nice tone to the story; however, Junior’s blunt language and sarcasm communicate the depth of his anger and pain, but also hope.
To clarify, Junior has his own way of verbal expression. He portrays anger through pain in his blunt language. He says he is “[...] just a poor-ass reservation kid [...] on the poor -ass Spokane Indian Reservation”(Alexie 7). This reveals Junior’s anger of living in the reservation. He defines poor as “unfortunate” or “not-wealthy”. When he refers to the word poor he reveals pain.
In addition, Junior expresses pain through his daily struggles. In his narrative voice, when he is mentioning his harassment and flaws, his diction contains a flow of pain. For example, he witnesses his pet’s passing due to the lack of money …show more content…

Throughout his story he uses sarcasm to reflect his anger in the same way he expresses it towards his pain. Although he mostly speaks his mind and reveals his anger and pain, he manages to bring out a brighter side to his feelings.His diction differs in the way he feels. Sherman Alexie once said, “I’m the reservation of my mind,” a line of a poem from the author Adriane C. Lewis, in his speech after winning the 2007 National Book Award. However, these words reflect Junior’s perspective because he is living with the mind of an Indian kid who just never understands he is his own

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