“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” —Oscar Wilde.
In the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, the main character’s older sister, Mary, only exists in the beginning and throughout the book, she has to learn how to live in the way Oscar Wilde talked about. Mary is introduced as a typical big sister, she teases her little brother and is very tough. However, we also learn that she lives in the basement and “froze” after high school. “She is the prettiest and strongest and funniest person who ever spent twenty-three hours a day alone in a basement.” Pg. 28. Mary shown to be amazing in Junior’s eyes despite cutting herself off from the world. However, I did not really think much of her in the beginning because she, even though she is smart, funny, beautiful, and random, stopped doing anything. Mary gave up and lived alone in a basement. Her attitude of living in the basement seemed to show that she was not everything Junior thought she was.
After Junior starts going to Reardon, Mary decides to move to Montana and start everything over.
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“But I just kept thinking that my sister’s spirit hadn’t been killed. She hadn’t given up. This reservation had tried to suffocate her, had kept her trapped in a basement, and now she was out roaming the huge grassy field of Montana.” Pg. 91. Mary sees that her brother is taking control of his own life and she decides to do the same, despite having been “frozen” since high school. When Mary died, she died while being alive. Mary died with the love of her life in a place she called beautiful. Even if her life was not perfect, it was enough for her to stay positive, and to find her home by leaving her house. Mary wanted to make something of herself and her writing and she proved that it is never too late follow your dreams and start to truly live instead of simply