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The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian Similarities

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Similarities and Differences on the Reservation and Reardon From the book “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian '' by Sherman Alexie shows many different examples of similarities and differences, Junior has had many different experiences with his time at Reardan and his time at Wellpenit. Junior's freshman year he has moved schools and is in a mostly white environment, which is new for him, because he is from a school full of Indians kids. There are many similarities and differences between Juniors life on the reservation and his life at Reardan. To begin, there are similarities on the reservation and at the white school, Reardan. Junior played basketball at both schools, but he didn't think he was good enough to make varsity at Reardan. “I suppose it had something to do with confidence. I mean I’d always been the lowest Indian on the reservation totem pole - I wasn’t expected to be good so I won’t. But in Reardan, my coach and the other players wanted me to be good. They needed me to be good. They expected me to be good. And so I became good.” (180) Junior did not believe he was good enough to play varsity, but he worked hard and became better for Reardan. Another similarity would have to be Junior friendships on the reservation and at Reardan. Rowdy is …show more content…

In Reardan, they were able to afford new books, but were not able to afford the new books at Wellpenit. “So that means my mother was born an Adams and she was still an Adams when she wrote her name in that book. And she was thirty when she gave birth to me. Yep, so that means I was staring at a geometry book that was at least thirty years older than I was.” (31) Junior explains how he has gotten his mothers book from when she was in school 30 years ago. Another example is that Reardan has very fun school dances when they dress up very nice, while at Wellpenit they don’t have dances. Those are only a few examples of differences shown in this

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When he was in Highschool he was an excellent student and an even better football player. He is six-feet-two and very muscular. Darry was super popular in Highschool and had many friends. “He was captain of the football team and he had been voted Boy of the year. But we just didn't have the money for him to go to college, even with the athletic scholarship he won”(Hinton, 16).

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When Junior is trying out for the basketball team, he doesn’t know what will happen but is following his dream. While in “Superman and Me” Sherman Alexie says Indians do not follow their dreams because an Indian on the “rez” who is smart is very rare. Junior “almost didn’t try out for the Rearden basketball team” because he thought he “wasn’t good enough to make even the C squad” and “didn’t want to get cut from the team”. (Absolutely True Diary 135) Junior ended up trying out for the basketball team because his dad told him to follow his dreams.

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Mr. p was one of the biggest inspirations to juniors actions. If it weren't for him Junior would be stuck at the rez forever and most likely become like all the other adults, drunk and angry. When junior began his journey to achieve his goals at Reardan it was very difficult. He was the only “different” kid there. Different meaning he was the only Indian in a school of white kids.

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1073 Words | 5 Pages

In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Arnold Spirit makes the tough decision to stop attending Wellpinit High School. Arnold was raised around reservation kids all his life and isn’t familiar with the norms of any other group of people. This move brings struggles to both him and his parents. In the novel, Arnold realizes Reardan values the education of their students more than Wellpinit and decides he is better off attending Reardan.

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Junior's best friend Rowdy abandoned him, and called him a traitor for going off the reservation. Though Reardan was a nice school, Junior found inequality, and prejudice there. He talked about getting bullied before people in his school even knew him, simply because of where he came from, and what he looked like. He experienced racial slurs, toxic teachers who displayed attitudes of dissent and disfavor towards him, not having proper transportation options to get to school, and many more notable issues. This was a very interesting effect of the writing that made the story successful in showing the characters' problems.

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1121 Words | 5 Pages

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.

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978 Words | 4 Pages

With living on the reservation, opportunities are limited or scarce, being where Junior is, most, if not all, have lost their hope, the hope to succeed or to get

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802 Words | 4 Pages

As the novel progresses Junior is keen on going to the school that is separated from his reservation called Reardon High. Even though Junior wants to go to this school so he can achieve a better education, much backlash came from Juniors tribe as it seemed as if he was abandoning his culture. Juniors started at Rearden very worried about what everyone would think of him, and on his first day he punched a white kid in the face for telling an insensitive joke to him. Junior went home feeling confident in what he did but later started to realize that him trying to prove himself to everyone was unnecessary.

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Junior asks, “Do you know the worst thing about being poor? Oh, maybe you’ve done the math in your head and you figure: Poverty=empty refrigerator + empty stomach”(Alexie 8). In the first ten pages of the book he points out that because his family was poor they sometimes didn't have enough money

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This shows that it is important to stay hopeful and junior manages to break multiple stereotypes that are associated with native Americans. Additionally, Rowdy aids Junior when breaking stereotypes of Native Americans being inferior people. When Reardan is first mentioned Junior says that “Reardan beat us 72-5 and 86-50, our only two losses of the season. “ (Alexie 50). Alexie shows that Junior and Rowdy both have a lack of confidence and believed that Native Americans were much

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“In the middle of a crazy drunk life, you have to hang on the good and sober moments tightly.” (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie page 216) This is a quote from the book that shows how Junior learns how to appreciate the good moments in life. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie the character Junior faces problems caused by drinking. The book starts off with his family living on the Indian reservation suffering from poverty and death.

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1069 Words | 5 Pages

In Sherman Alexie’s, “The Absolutely Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, Alexie shares the story of a teenage Native American boy named Junior who lives on the rez and desires to have a better education. But for this, he must attend a white school 22 miles from the rez. Despite having various forms of oppression both living on the rez and going to Reardan High School, Alexie shows Junior’s budding future through the use of literary devices and Junior’s

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1469 Words | 6 Pages

Evan Fonseca Mr. Rodriguez Academic LiteraturePeriod 7 21 April 2023 ARD-Final Essay “But somehow or another, Indians have forgotten that reservations were meant to be death camps. I wept because I was the only one who was brave and crazy enough to leave the rez. I was the only one with enough arrogance,” (Sherman 218). In the fiction novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, the author wrote about the difficulties the protagonist young Indian teenager, Junior, felt as a native american who lived within a Spokane reservation in Washington state and was attending an all white school. It shows his struggles, and how he matured and developed through the losses and setbacks he faced in life.

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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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780 Words | 4 Pages

When people move from one place to another, they often have to start a new life. They end up cutting ties with people that they knew to build their new life. Occasionally though, people find a way to maintain a balance between both the new and old lives. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, the main character, Arnold “Junior” Spirit, switched schools and becomes part of 2 different worlds. The second Reardan basketball game against Wellpinit represents the conflict in Junior’s life between his old life and his new life.

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