“Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder,” the title of the novel says it all. Renowned author Kent Nerburn draws us deep into the world of a Lakota elder set in the majestic spaces of the western Dakotas. As the story unfolds, the elder known as only, Dan, speaks ardently about the power of silence and the difference between land and property. Dan speaks about the white people’s urge to claim the Indian heritage.
Light in the forest written by Conrad Richter. True son acted very different from the beginning, then towards the end. True son was a young man that grew up In Indian territory, and was born white but got captured by the when he was a young boy. Towards the beginning of the book he loved the Indians a very much disliked the whites and more to the end he started to like both the Indian and white. The and many examples and events that happens in Light In The Forest.
One may say that McCandless’ violent childhood is what caused his downfall. McCandless may have even had the right idea, separating himself from his family, but due to his fragile state of mind he may have gone to too much of an extreme. He ended up taking the policies and principles of transcendentalism too far, which is really what resulted in his death. A concept that transcendentalism goes strongly against is materialism, a principle that may have saved his life. He was so anti materialistic in fact, that he refused to even have a phone or form of communication, this ultimately could have saved his life.
Regret is an incurable disease caused by lies, distortion, and falsehood. People often try to find a cure for this disease or try to believe that regret is something that is easy to cure, however, it is not. Once an individual make themselves believe in a lie they tell themselves, the pain and suffering that comes with regret will continue to linger for a lifetime. Sinclair Ross’s short story, “The Painted Door” highlights the idea that individuals who deceive themselves in the chase for happiness often create a lifetime of regret.
When society thinks of the word “childhood,” they imagine it as a precious time for children to be in school and freely play, to grow and learn with the love and support from people dear to their hearts. It is also known to be a cherished period where children are to be innocent and live carefree from fear. However, in the context of The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, childhood is viewed as a tough hardship that Jeannette and her siblings have overcame, and the memories they carry has greatly impacted their lives that it has molded them to who they are
Night Essay The reason we have family is to help us out through exceptional and the crummy times. In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, this is demonstrated perfectly. By examining Night , we can see that family is the key to survival, which is important because those who don 't have family,often lost faith and the will to live.
In Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie, Alexie’s father’s love for books grew to make his self-love books ending up in Alexie teaching himself how to read. Alexie describes the stereotypes and what is expected of Indian children and how Indian children were expected to basically have no knowledge Many lived up to those expectations inside the classroom but invalidated them on the outside. While other children were doing this, Alexie’s father was one of the few Indians on the reservation who went to Catholic School on purpose and was also an devoted reader. Alexie grew up around books. His father had a strong love for books as he bought them by the pound from pawn shops, goodwill and the salvation army.
Hope is a powerful thing; more powerful than death itself. Night, by Elie Wiesel, is about a jewish boy who is put into a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Elie doubted his faith to survive but had others to lean on during the hardship. Elie had the support of others as a sense of hope to survive the long, cold nights, with little food and water.
In Nothing But the Truth there is one thing that stood out to me throughout the entire book. The whole book is full of lies. Philip Malloy tells lies about everything and to everyone. He lies to his parents, the principal, and even to a reporter that is interviewing him. Throughout the book we continue to see the lies play out until the very end of the book when Philip finally decides to tell the truth.
The book focuses on a young boy named Arnold Spirit who shows persistence and bravery as he defies all odds and strides towards a happier more successful life than his parents and ancestors before him. Arnold is a bright, inspiring young boy who grows up with little fortune and is destined to continue down the path of a poor, misunderstood Indian. However, his fate changes for the better when a spark lights the fire inside of him to strive to pursue a better, more flourishing life as he makes an extraordinary decision to transfer to an all-white school for a worthier education. However, the drastic change of schools puts a burden on his family to get him to school as well as leads to extreme bullying from not just kids at his new school but also from his fellow Indians in his hometown. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I learned that it doesn 't matter what your situation is and what you are expected to accomplish in your lifetime or what standards have already been set for you because you can be whoever you want to be with hard work, ambition, and confidence.
The ending Kurt Vonnegut’s book, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, took me very much by surprise. I had imagined it to end in someone’s death, Mushari taking them down directly, or something else more along those lines. The book ended with Eliot splitting the Rosewater fortune up to fifty-seven different children that are not even his children. He told them to have their names be Rosewater and, “to be fruitful and multiply,” (Page 275). Those children’s parents had all claimed that Eliot was the father to their children but only because Mushari had started that lie.
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.
A tension between Indian parent and their children is how close of a family they are as opposed to American Families. In American society it’s not rare for teenagers to be autonomous, but children from different backgrounds (immigrant families) face a problem when they try to be autonomous. “Young Indian- Americans of high school and college are comparing themselves with their non-Indian classmates, and repeatedly express frustration at their own parents efforts to restrict their movements, monitor their behavior and make decisions for them”( Lessinger, 109). Indian immigrant children are more exposed to the cultural and agree that the cultural of growing up early is unknown to their parents. This sheltered, nurturing life cause problem for
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).
Expectations often impose an inescapable reality. In the short story “Indian Education” by Sherman Alexie, Victor often struggles with Indian and American expectations during school. Alexie utilizes parallelism in the construction of each vignette, introducing a memoir of tension and concluding with a statement about Victor’s difficulties, to explore the conflict between cultures’ expectations and realities. Alexei initially uses parallelism to commence each vignette with cultural tension. In second grade, Victor undergoes a conflict with his missionary teacher, who coerced Victor into taking an advanced spelling test and cutting his braids.
