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Part Time Indian Essay On Poverty

771 Words4 Pages

Aryzza Ducut
Mr. Rodriguez
Academic Literacy 112
21 April 2023
The Impact of Poverty “I had five bucks in my pocket. What could I buy with that? Maybe one plate of pancakes. Maybe.” The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Alexie Sherman is a YA novel that is in Spokane, Washington. The main character, Junior struggles with numerous problems, and finding hope outside his reservation is his escape. One of Junior’s biggest problems he often encounters is poverty. Too far deep in hardship that he possibly can’t afford one plate of pancakes. Poverty damages how a person defines themselves and the lack of hope the person has left. “The impact of poverty can drive you to demoralize yourself.” This theme wants the reader to realize that …show more content…

He reflects on himself as an ugly and unintelligent Indian because of his lack of money and the mindset that he will always be poor. No matter what, he is fated to be poor with no hope of escaping it. In the novel, Sherman Alexie indicates this, “It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you're poor because you're stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you're stupid and ugly because you're Indian. And because you're Indian you start believing you're destined to be poor. It's an ugly circle and there's nothing you can do about it,” (Alexie 19). In addition, Junior remarks that it’s not just him that is poor, but his tribe in the reservation too. It shows how much poverty is affecting him and the people on the reservation. According to Sherman Alexie, he mentions in the novel, “My school and my tribe are so poor and sad that we have to study from the same dang books our parents studied from. That is absolutely the saddest thing in the world,” (Alexie …show more content…

His mother and father’s dreams were just fantasies played in the hands of poverty. If his mother and father couldn’t achieve their dreams, Junior himself can’t reach success if destitution is dragging him down. To illustrate this point, “And it's not like my mother and father were born into wealth. It's not like they gambled away their family fortunes. My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people,” (Alexie 11). In addition to that, another quote from the novel that Sherman Alexie affirms is, “But we reservation Indians don't get to realize our dreams. We don't get those chances. Or choices. We're just poor. That's all we are,” (Alexie 13). It’s engraved in Junior’s mind that he’s trapped for the rest of his life, and won’t amount to anything because they don’t have options or a

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