The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian Essay

Different Representations of Mourning and the Stages of Grief Although mourning will end, death’s grasp on one’s life will never falter. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie is a realistic fiction novel that occurs on a Spokane reservation and a neighboring high school, Reardan. The protagonist, Arnold Spirit Junior, and his family experience significant loss after the deaths of Junior’s sister, Mary Spirit, and his grandmother, as well as a close family friend, Eugene. Through Junior’s lens, the reader witnesses the differences between how the family mourns each death, and how they grieve. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie presents the theme that each individual deals with loss

For some, this may be their religious beliefs. Junior was feeling helpless as if he was being punished for his sins after losing his grandmother and father’s friend, Eugene, “I was mad at God; I was mad at Jesus. They were mocking me, so I mocked them” (Alexie 171). Conceptually, most religions that fall under Christianity preach that a single god dictates the lives of their worshippers, and any cataclysm is a test of their will. Junior feels a sense of guilt, an unreasonable feeling that he had some influence on the fates of Eugene and his grandmother, and this affects his perception of religion. Instead of seeing their deaths as just a test of his will, Junior perverts the sovereignty which God holds and assumes that he is being punished for an event out of his control. Junior reads a book about Euripides’s plays and relates to one, which focuses on Medea, a woman who is so distraught and betrayed that she kills her own children, “And after Eugene’s funeral, I agreed with her. I could have easily killed myself, killed my mother and father, killed the birds, killed the trees, and killed the oxygen in the air. More than anything, I wanted to kill God” (Alexie 173). Junior was joyless, believing God had stripped away everyone he cared for. He feels a lack of control, and to avoid a feeling of helplessness, his emotions manifest themselves as anger towards God, who he perceives is steering his life. Loss can cause one to grieve differently, especially when religion comes into play. Anger is the most prominent of these forms of grief, as some religions worship a lack of control and disconnect from one’s