Theme Of The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian

1140 Words5 Pages
ANELISWA NALA
2015317601
ENGL1624
DUE: 28 OCTOBER 2016

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian has one mutual theme that associates all the other themes in the novel together. In the chapter titled; “Valentine Heart,” we encompass the most prominent and most cognisant theme of them all- grief. This chapter conveys the most detectable attributes of grief that functions as both an individual and collective process of dealing with loss. Argumentatively one could say that grieving has its fair share of adversities. That particular adversity is melancholia, which is when an individual is unable to fully recuperate from a loss and consequently their lives remain stagnant as they never seem to exit the grieving mode. This translates to the tension between mobility and immobility that each individual thus experiences. To say that there is a precise manner in which an individual should lament in would be flawed, because every individual approaches life at a different kind of lens. I will be discussing this in terms of the causes and the consequences of grief and the detailed ways in which the individuals deal with the grief.
One could say that the most evident origin of grief in this chapter is fixed around the usage of alcohol. The first occurrence of death that is depicted is when, “My dad’s best friend, Eugene, was shot in the parking lot of a 7-eleven in Spokane.” “Way too drunk, Eugene was shot and killed by one of his good friends, Bobby who was too drunk to even