Thomas Melles K. Dirck Freshman Honor English, Period 6 2 September 2016 Dreams lead everywhere Dreams are what people live for yet, in life, dreams are almost never lived. In The Absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian written by Sherman Alexie the main character Junior tries to follow his dreams. Dreams are what people should strive for but yet many do not even try to follow them. Junior’s sister and Sherman Alexie both were following their dreams to “save their lives”. Junior has a sister in the book who is lived in their basement and was not following her dreams, while in “Superman and Me” Sherman Alexie writes about how he is trying to follow his dreams to save his life.
Perseverance: The Road to Success and Maturation Life knocks people down all the time. But it is said that it doesn't matter how many times a person gets knocked down, it is how many times that person gets back up. This is called perseverance, which can be used to help those succeed and overcome the hardships in their life. In “The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” Alexie uses the protagonist Junior, to show how perseverance can be an effective trait, as it helps him conquer the obstacles in his life, and also expand his limits.
Throughout the book of the Absolutely true diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie the main character and narrator of the story gives us a variety of themes in his book, one of which is Identity. Starting from reading the title I found myself trying to predict what the book was going to be about all that came to me was a book about the story of an Indian men. The title itself gives an identity to the main character. Even from the first page of the book, in the fist sentence it shows you who this boy is. “I was born with water on the brain” he says.
In her essay ““Indians”: Textualism, Morality, and the Problem of History”, Jane Tompkins takes her readers behind the scenes of her academic research in attempts to discover the true history of Indians—Native Americans. She encounters several versions of history regarding her study and therefore was left questioning how to make sense of history when there are so many versions of it. Throughout the course of her research, she realized that the historical facts differed in perspective because the historian’s background, towards the study, differed as well. This goes well with Carr’s essay and how he mentions that the historian is tied to his facts. As mentioned earlier, Carr explains how the historian writes accounts based on his or her worldview;
In Sherman Alexie's Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, Junior, and Rowdy, are highlighted by the unique friendship between them. Through casual conversation, repeated emotions, and dialogue between the two. Showcasing their bond and depth of friendship. They use slurs and curse words with each other, showing informality and comfort in their communication. For example, in paragraphs 7-9 "I was reading a book," "Wow, you were reading a book?"
In Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, the main character Junior did not betray his culture by not following the same path as his fellow people on the reservation. Junior knew he wanted more for himself, but Mr. P is the one who pushed him to make a change. “But not you. You can’t give up. You won’t give up.
In this excerpt of Sherman Alexie’s novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, Junior, a boy living on an Indian reservation in Spokane, describes the injustice of being poor. When his dog Oscar becomes sick and his family cannot pay for medical aid, Junior writes in his diary depicting the hopelessness of his situation to people who live outside the reservation and have no experience with such a despairing situation. Junior writes with a sarcastically despairing tone, and uses imagery, language, and sentence structure to create a passive aura which displays his complete and utter resignation. Junior’s grotesque imagery evokes a strong sense of sympathy in the reader with phrases such as “red, watery, snotty eyes.” He does not
At some point in our lives, we all experience some type of trauma. Research shows that certain groups of people are more likely to endure trauma and that may lead to substance use for certain people. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, the main character, Junior, is a 14 year old boy going into high school who experiences a lot of grief and is exposed to many people using and abusing substances and having addictions. Junior is a Native American (he calls himself an Indian) who was born and raised on a reservation named Spokane in Washington State. Junior lives in poverty and because of this, his father drinks, and not only does Junior’s father drink, everyone on the reservation drinks or has an addiction to some sort of
Arnold expresses the value in education by comparing Wellpinit and Reardan; he compares the two school’s success rates among the students. I can relate this to my personal experiences because my high school did not have a lot of resources and only offered 3 AP classes. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Arnold realizes he is being robbed from a good education when he receives the same textbook his mom had when she was in high school. He knew no one in the reservation made it to college because none had hope.
The Route Of Bullying Relatively everyone gets bullied or picked on at least once in their life, but for Arnold it’s a daily struggle that he must overcome. Arnold grows up as a small kid with lots of problems as a result of severe brain damage. He lives on an Indian reservation in poverty causing people to pick on him or bully him constantly because he is an easy target. In the novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie shows us how people take advantage of each other’s weaknesses and use it to their own advantage to bully them, as shown when Arnold describes how groups of kids would spin him around and call him globe, when the Andruss brothers beat him up and when Roger told the most racist joke Arnold had ever heard.
In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Rowdy’s heart is best represented by Junior. Junior brings happiness into Rowdy’s life, causing them to be inseparable friends. Throughout the novel, Junior continually brings up him and Rowdy spending time together. In total “Rowdy and [Junior] have spent 40,880 hours in each other’s company” (Alexie 24). This indicates that Rowdy and Junior will be best friends forever because of their time spent together.
One theme in the novel “The absolutely true diary of a part time indian,” is to live life to the fullest. For example, when junior and rowdy climb the biggest tree on the Rez because they weren’t scared that day. Arnold explains how he feels about heights when explaining “No matter how old i get, i think i’m always gonna be scared of falling. But i wasn’t scared of gravity on that day. Heck, gravity didn’t even exist”(Alexie pg.220).
In his book the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie portrays a teenage boy, Arnold Spirit (junior) living in white man’s world, and he must struggle to overcome racism and stereotypes if he must achieve his dreams. In the book, Junior faces a myriad of misfortunes at his former school in ‘the rez’ (reservation), which occurs as he struggles to escape from racial and stereotypical expectations about Indians. For Junior he must weigh between accepting what is expected of him as an Indian or fight against those forces and proof his peers and teachers wrong. Therefore, from the time Junior is in school at reservation up to the time he decides to attend a neighboring school in Rearden, we see a teenager who is facing tough consequences for attempting to go against the racial stereotypes.
Books have been banned in schools and libraries throughout the United States for centuries. They have been banned for reasons such as negativity, racism, sexual explicitness, and offensive language, all of which you see in Sherman Alexie's "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian". As seen on page 25, Junior, the main character, says "I spend hours in the bathroom with a magazine that has one thousand pictures of naked movie stars...". This is one of the many controversial quotes in the book. Although this book contains material that angers and offends many, I still believe that it should not be banned.
Throughout the course of history, Native Americans have been not been treated fairly by the U.S. government. According to the documentary, Hidden America, Diane Sawyer states that the poorest population is the Indian Reservation from South Dakota named Pine Ridge. At this reservation, the majority of the Indians rely on the government for money and commodities. Commodities are the food promised by the US government after the US seized 7.3 millions acres of Lakota land. With this land, the government slayed sixteen million buffalo in just fifty years.
