Part Time Indian Theme

The Absolutely True Diary of a part time Indian.

Topic: 1.) In the novel, many themes are explored. Select a theme that touched you as you read the novel. Write an essay on this theme to show how lives of people are affected.

Poverty and privilege theme:

While reading the novel I came across a theme of poverty and privilege. There are characters such as Arnold also known as Junior which lives in poverty and this causes many problems. Then there are characters such as Penelope and Gordy which are on the privileged side who also have problems in their life. But we see that being in poverty is worse than being privileged with problems.

The character Junior suffers in poverty with the rest of his community in his reservation. Junior says that people think that hunger is the worst part of poverty. But sometimes they get a bucket of KFC and it then feels like that its worth living for. In the novel we read that the poverty is an ongoing event in this reservation and that no one is successful if they stay there. He explains that his parents were both raised in the reservation and had aspirations once but have fallen into the same cycle of poverty as many of their peers. If things were better in their community his mother

No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.” Junior faces many difficulties. He often misses school when he goes to Reardan as it was far from home and there was never gas in the car and goes sleeps being hungry. Junior’s dad spends most of the money as he is an alcoholic and gambles. His dad does try by driving 22 miles now and then for him to attend school. Junior wants to help Penelope for raising money for charity but he knows that his community is poor. He does get some money but then gets robbed. He also doesn’t have money to buy a new suit for the winter formal and ends up wearing one of his dad’s outdated oversized suits but his friends thought is was cool and