Effects of Alcohol in Communities Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian takes place in the present time in Spokane, Washington. This is a story of a boy named Junior who grows up on an Indian reservation and has to fight with poverty while watching alcohol destroy his family as he tries to find hope. He realizes in order to find hope he must get out of the reservation, so his way of doing that is by attending Reardan, an all-white school outside of Spokane, where he faces a complete set of new challenges. In his novel, Alexie conveys the idea that the misuse of alcohol has devastating effects on a community. The novel suggests that alcohol can have deadly effects on families, leading to loved ones dying both directly of alcohol but also …show more content…
As Mr. P is explaining to Junior about how he needs to leave the reservation in order to escape the insidious addict filled, depressed world that he lives in finally concludes with, "'Son,' Mr. P said. 'You're going to find more and more hope the farther and farther you walk away from this sad, sad, sad reservation'" (Alexie 43). This conversation indicates the reservation and the community as a whole has chosen to give up, instead of finding hope for their life, and just turns to alcohol for all their issues. Mr. P acknowledges this which is why he warns Junior that in order to ever make anything of his life he must leave the hopeless reservation. After Junior accepts his father's apology for using all their remaining money on alcohol, running away to get drunk, and leaving no money left for Christmas, Junior adds, "But it wasn't okay. It was about as far from okay as you can get. If okay was the earth, then I was standing on Jupiter. I don't know why I said it was okay. For some reason, I was protecting the feelings of the man who had broken my heart yet again. Jeez, I'd