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The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian Sparknotes

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The basic idea of collective continuance is that people have a natural urge to work alongside one another to create a sense of community. Kyle Whyte connects this idea with ethnic perspectives and viewpoints, mainly indigenous people, a community built on shared experience and endurance. This unit's theme is reconciliation, and Collective Continuance has a mix of communal and cultural reconciliation. He talks about how indigenous people see the world as one big ecosystem with everyone connected, understanding that what we do today will change what will be tomorrow. The main takeaway from reconciliation is that it is not one-sided, but rather both sides reconciling together. It means breaking down barriers and having a mutual understanding. …show more content…

Like Collective Continuance, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian taps into communal and cultural reconciliation, but also looks into the personal side of reconciliation. Junior was faced with many hardships, growing up on a Spokane Indian reservation, hydrocephalus, and poverty to name a few. Poverty had a significant impact on Junior and his desire to leave the reservation and go to an all-white high school. Going to an all-white high school would give him a lot more opportunities than staying on the reservation, as "Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor. "(Alexie 11) One of the biggest players for causing trauma in this novel was the presence of alcoholism. This linked the poverty he and his family faced, along with the reservation, as reservations have a high unemployed, alcoholic, or addict population. There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain, we all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away"(Alexie 86). The emphasis on "We all have pain" alludes to Junior wanting to find a way to deal with his pain in a different, safer way. This novel also incorporates dark humor and witty remarks, which could be junior's way of coping with the pain discussed earlier. "The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are

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1058 Words | 5 Pages

In the beginning of the book, Junior says that living on the reservation has generations of Indians losing hope. They accept their lives as their ancestors did.. His parents couldn't follow their dreams because they didn't have a support system. Junior is the example of how one can break the path of the traditional life on the reservation if one has the motivation and a good support system. Junior  had the love and emotional support of his parents and was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to attend a prestigious  Prep school based on the suggestion of Mr. P, a teacher at the rez school.

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804 Words | 4 Pages

Junior being born on the Reservation has always been poor and put down by others. He has had a horrible life with pain coming from a new direction each day but has coped with it that is why he is still alive today to write this book. Although he may or may not admit it, the ways he coped with his life were not great after all. When faced with a

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497 Words | 2 Pages

Over time, many Native Americans turned to alcohol to cope with the pain and difficulties they faced. Junior's father in the story is one example, as he battles alcoholism. This addiction not only hurts many people, but also tears families apart and makes it harder for communities to heal and move forward. Racism is something Junior deals with both on the reservation and when he goes to the arena. This isn't new: Native Americans have faced discrimination since the first settlers arrived.

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703 Words | 3 Pages

It may have been difficult at first, but Junior has finally seen something different, which proves to him that not everything is the same; there is something that is unique in everyone, no matter who they may be. As a result, Junior is more comfortable in his own skin and with others; he treats them with much more respect and is more gracious. At the beginning of the novel, he may have been throwing a geometry book at a teacher, but by the end, he is voicing his own opinions and sharing his thoughts. Even though Junior has made some startling advancements, he has not changed in some regards; he can still hold a grudge like no other, and has not truly forgiven some characters in the novel. He still considers many of his white classmates to have personally brought his problems on him.

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482 Words | 2 Pages

Junior is a young boy that lives on a indian reservation in the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. As a result of living on the reservation, Junior is forced to deal with all the horrible consequences such as poverty, drunks, and bullies on the reservation. First off Junior lives on the reservation and has to deal with how poor his family is and he has to help them deal with the poverty. In the beginning of the story Junior tells us about the struggles of being poor by explaining “empty refrigerator + empty stomach= poverty”(8). Sometimes Junior and his family have to go without eating a meal because they can not afford the food.

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771 Words | 4 Pages

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.

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422 Words | 2 Pages

People just don't live and hide in basements if they're happy. ”(Page 39). This is important to the chapter because Junior sees how his sister had a dream but never accomplished it. She didn’t try or have the courage and will to, and she’s also falling into the footsteps of his father. If it wasn’t for this page in the chapter, Junior wouldn’t realize that all of his family have given up hope, and wouldn’t be determined to change

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Faced with many obstacles from poverty to racial stereotypes, Junior must override them if he is to make his life better than that of fellow Indians. Interestingly, rather than letting the obstacles hold him back Junior understands that his destiny is in his own hands and he must celebrate who he is even if it means fighting. In the end, we see a boy who have managed to overcome all hardships to get to the top, even if it means making tough choices such as changing schools, therefore is could be seen that race and stereotypes only made Junior

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This shows that even though he struggles with going to the school, he is insistent on going to Reardan instead of the school on the reservation. Alexie relates to some readers, who are forced to walk miles just to go to school from their houses because they cannot afford a car or a bus ride to the school. Junior appeals to pathos depicting that he doesn't have a reliable ride every day due to his parents not having enough gas money, the car breaking down, or his parents being hungover or can't because they are working which makes the reader pity him. Additionally, Junior begins to get hope because he wants to better his education outside of the reservation. After Junior speaks with Mr.P about hope, he says that he “wants to go to Reardan,” I said again.

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994 Words | 4 Pages

Junior feels immense guilt for having pent-up anger on behalf of the reservation's actions for him leaving Wellpinit High School and going to Rearden. Once Junior finally was able to redeem himself for the first game that caused him to get a concussion, he felt a rage overcome him and acted upon it. He tried the entire game to beat Rowdy and the people that let him down. However, once Junior beat the Wellpinit school, he understood that every chance the others had, he took that away. As for the repercussions of his actions, he knew that Rowdy, in particular, his father would not be understanding of the loss at hand, Junior says, “And I knew that Rowdy's father was probably going beat the crap out of him for losing this game,” (Alexie, 196).

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735 Words | 3 Pages

Junior loses a lot of friends and family at the young age of fourteen. He gets bullied because he was born with too much cerebral spinal fluid inside his skull, but he has his best friend Rowdy there to help him. Junior realizes that he needs to leave the reservation to get a better life for himself. He goes to a new school off the

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782 Words | 4 Pages

Additionally, John is clearly aware of the severity of the consequences associated with these rights but he still is adamant about his desire for freedom. While the majority of people in the World State have never seen people “grow old and ugly and impotent” (212), John sees his own mother age and grow ill. Similarly, while the citizens of the State are not permitted to experience “unspeakable pains of every kind” (212), John experiences such pains living in the Savage Reservation, namely when the other inhabitants of the island hit him and pelt him

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702 Words | 3 Pages

Overcoming a challenge, not giving up, and not being afraid of change are a few themes demonstrated in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Perhaps the most prominent theme derived from the novel is defying the odds, or in other words rising above the expectations of others. Junior Spirit exemplifies this theme throughout the entirety of the book. As Junior is an Indian, he almost expects that he will never leave the reservation, become an alcoholic, and live in poverty like the other Indians on the reservation—only if he sits around and does not endeavor to change his fate. When Junior shares the backstory of his parents, he says that his mother and father came from “poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people” (11).

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920 Words | 4 Pages

There are main themes in every novel some may be obvious while some require research and analysis to find. In The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, there are many themes such as bullying, racism, drug abuse and alcoholism. Though only a few of those apply directly to Junior, the protagonist, there is one that he is affected by more than any other. This one is isolation.

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629 Words | 3 Pages

Aftermath of the Invasion Finally, it is important to note that the invasion of Iraq has produced several challenging problems for Iraq, the region, the international community, and for neoconservatives themselves. In fact, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, the lack of planning for the period after the military operations ended, as well as the violent opposition to the new regime were the primary results of the neoconservative misconceptions about Iraq (Plesch, 2005, p. 45). Additionally, in their War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq, the United States and its coalition did not achieve their objective of weakening terrorist groups. Also, in the immediate period after the invasion in 2003 and throughout 2004, the Iraqi view

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