Short Story Of Arnold Spirit

Arnold Spirit Junior is hyper-conscious of his position inside any social group. Consequently, he is aware of what it means to be Indian versus what it means to be White, he worries about what it means to be a man (when it is acceptable for men to cry, or when boys have to stop holding hands with their friends) and how to fit in as a “freak”(p.98) who is bullied by his peers and even by some adults. A big part of Junior’s coming of age is trying to figure out the extent to which people are defined by their birth or their origins, as opposed to their individual choices. At the beginning of his story Junior states, “I was born with water on the brain” (p.1) (a reference to his own disability of hydrocephalus) and identifying his tough, irrational,

In his double life in Reardan and on the reservation, he feels “like a magician slicing himself in half, with Junior living on the north side of the river and Arnold living on the south,” (p. 60-61) “I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other. It was like being Indian was my job, but it was only part-time.” (p.118) Just as his absolutely true identity includes both Junior and Arnold, the divided extremes he describes often turn out to be hazy. Roger, the Reardan student who greets Junior in the schoolyard with a cruel racist joke, becomes a sympathetic friend and role model; Rowdy is both Junior’s greatest friend and his worst enemy, and hates him because he loves him so abundantly. Things like the basketball game Reardan wins against Wellpinit becomes both a glorious victory and a shameful moral loss for Junior. He realizes that his team has numerous economic and social advantages. Junior’s ability to address topics like poverty, racism and bullying with humor is a significant characteristic of his voice. For Junior, as well as his friends Rowdy and Penelope, part of growing up is recognizing that the world is more complicated than a strict division of opposites, it’s possible to be more than one thing—part of countless different “tribes”—is what enables him to unify his split identity and, as someone destined to travel beyond the reservation, navigate the world both figuratively and