Analysis Of The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian

On chapter 6 Arnold makes the decision to move to Reardan which is an all-white school with his parent’s approval. Yet on page 47 his mother reminds him something “The Indians around here are going to be very angry with you”. Which makes him think twice about staying in the reservation and not getting the best education available because he “figured my fellow tribal members here are going to torture me” page 47. Otherwise if he goes to Reardan even though he will betray his fellow members he will eventually have a better education than in the reservation. Yet that would be a major conflict because the Indians from the reservation believe each Indian should remain with their reservation and its culture and not interact with the surrounding white cultures. On chapter 7 he makes a final decision which is to transfer to Reardan with or

He also deals with an Identity-crisis and not able to recognize which should relate to. As he says ''They stared at me, the Indian boy with the black eye and swollen nose, my going-away gifts from Rowdy. Those white kids couldn't believe their eyes. They stared at me like I was Bigfoot or a UFO. What was I doing at Reardan, whose mascot was an Indian, thereby making me the only other Indian in town? (Sherman 27). On his first at the new school, Arnold sees himself not only through his own eyes, but also through the eyes his classmates as well. He realizes that they don't see him as Junior the weirdo Indian, to them, he is something foreign. In this sense, Arnold starts seeing the way he sees himself and the way his classmates sees him.

Growing up on a reservation where almost everyone has lost hope, Junior feels like an outcast for having a passion to chase after his dreams. When he moves to Reardan to find hope, he is gawked at and teased because he is the only Indian there. Junior faces internal conflicts within himself figuring out how to balance his two selves. According to Junior, “traveling between Reardan and Wellpinit, between the little white town and the reservation, [he] always felt like a stranger. [Junior] was half Indian in one place and half white in the other. It was like being Indian was [Junior’s] job, but it was only a part-time job. And it didn’t pay well at all” (Alexie 118). Junior is determined to discover his identity as it is evident in his choice of words. Feeling like a stranger wherever he goes, he believes that he is too white for the reservation while being too Indian for Reardan. The people on the reservation live in an atmosphere where they trust only each other and stick up for one another. However, when Junior goes to the reservation after being exposed to a community filled with white people, the Spokane’s do not see him as a true Indian anymore, hence the reason why Junior

In the book “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie, the character I’ll be focusing on is Arnold. Chapter after chapter, Arnold has contrastive impressions and temper. From the beginning of the book to the end, Arnold finds himself trapped in obstacles that he has to overcome, as well as developing a crush on a white girl named Penelope. Because of the way Arnold transforms his impressions makes me think of how interesting this character is. In the beginning, Arnold speaks of his life as an Indian on the reservation. As soon as he first stepped foot in Wellpinit High, he met his teacher, Mr.P, in which convinced Arnold to vacate the Rez even after everything Arnold’s been through such as troubles in his life. One quote is “If you stay on this Rez, they’re going to kill you. I’m going to kill you. We’re all going to kill you. You’ve been fighting off that brain surgery, you fought off those seizures. You fought off all the drunks and drug addicts,” (p.g 43)

In the novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Arnold is an seen as different from other tribe members. He constantly has to endure hardships that physically and mentally affect him. When Rowdy asks Arnold to go to the powwow with him,

In the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, other than attending Reardan, Arnold Spirit made his most important choice in trying out for the Reardan basketball team. This is evident when Arnold states this: “I almost didn't t try out for the Reardan basketball team. I just figured I wasn't good enough to make even the C squad. And I didn't want to get cut from the team. I didn't think I could live through that humiliation” (Alexie 135). This quote is important because Arnold proves to himself that he can and will be successful. When he made the team, he did not just prove to himself that he can be successful, but he showed the members on the reservation that it is possible to be successful no matter where someone is from.

Even after hanging out with a bunch of the American people, Arnold still feels attached to his own heritage. He loves his family and his best friend, Rowdy, and he feels that he needs to make amends with Rowdy. He was really scared that Rowdy would hate him and Junior would need to leave his old Indian self. Later he fixed his problems while playing "one-on-one (basketball) for hours..." (pg. 230) and they "didn't keep score" (pg. 230). Also, Junior cares about his family a lot. When two of them died in a row (his grandmother and sister), he didn't know what to do without them. He also thinks that Indians are forgiving of any kind of eccentricity (until the Americans came). "Gay people were seen as magical, too...Gay people could do anything. They were like Swiss army knives!" (pg. 155). He is pretty accepting of his heritage. He knows that he is Indian going to a white

16). Arnold perceives himself within his relations with his family and the reservation, thus his self-esteem is directly tied to his place within the two groups. However near the end of the book, Arnold cries for his “fellow tribal members” future in the reservation (Alexie, 2009, p. 216) and acknowledges that he “was the only one who was brave and crazy enough to leave the rez…. The only one with enough arrogance” (Alexie, 2009, p. 217). Although part of his self image is still tied to his tribe, Arnold sees himself as independent from them. He has a sense of who he is from his choice to leave the reservation and the qualities that allowed him to do so. The experiences Arnold encountered along the way such as exclusion, individuals with highly independent self-construals, and the deaths of his led to changes in his self-concept.

(Alexie, 2007, p.85). Mr. Doge’s face was red, he used Arnold’s ethnicity and his home environment against him to try to prove his point. The Indians don’t have the best education. Therefore, Mr. Doge relies on his position of power and on stereotypes about Indians to try to prove himself rather than helping the student

and he said it was both and in his head he was thinking that “… Junior live’d’ on the north side of the Spokane River and Arnold live’d’ on the south” (Alexie, 61). Junior also had to learn the “rules” of Reardan on who was popular and who was not and even how to fight because that was even different then the reservation (Alexie, 61). In the end of the school year Junior came to a mutual love for both Reardan and the reservation and both places accepted him as

The novel's second major setting is Reardan, an affluent, mostly-white town 22 miles away from the reservation in Wellpinit. Reardan is home to the high school where Arnold decides to transfer. Arnold's identity in Reardan is not directly related to his tribe or his family. He is known in Reardan not as "Junior," but as

In “The Stone Boy”, Arnold learned to hide his feelings and thoughts in order to protect himself from the situation of being isolated. Furthermore, Arnold is a strong character in this story. Even though he is being misinterpreted many times by many people around him, he still keeps himself strong and staunch. It can be said that he is not beaten by the isolation. In addition, there is very few describing of Arnold’s inner world so that readers can not tell what he actually feels and thinks. We can only tell that he is strong through his reactions. For instance, he pretends to have no emotions on anything, and he tries not to be conspicuous after that accident. He is desperate for being the son that his family still knows about. Thus, there is a lack of description of Arnold’s inner heart when he is being isolated by his

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a novel about a young boy named Arnold Spirit. He lives on an Indian reservation, but doesn’t fit in. He was born with cerebral spinal fluid inside his skull which made his head abnormally large and caused him to have a stutter. This made him a target on the rez. He was constantly being bullied and tormented by all of the other Indians. “Everybody on the rez called me a retard about twice a day. They call me a retard when they are pantsing me or stuffing my head in the toilet or just smacking me upside the head.” (Alexie 4) Arnold would face hatred and prejudice like this everyday. The people on the reservation are prejudice because they call Arnold a retard, a word sadly associated with stupid, without even knowing his actual mental intelligence. Everyone on the rez

The novel is called The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian because it is the story written in three person limited about Arnold’s life. Arnold is an Indian currently living at a reservation when he goes and joins a white school, Reardan. The Absolutely True Diary part is there because Arnold story is correct in truth and accuracy because it is Arnold’s story and is based on Arnold’s perspective. The part of the novel saying A Part-time Indian is because Arnold is seen as a part Indian. Although he is an Indian, he adapted some of the white culture making him seem not just Indian, but white as well. The novel is called The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian because it reflects the novel’s purpose, the story of Arnold’s

Arnold’s change of identity is shown through the author’s use of setting. At first, he lives in Wellpinit, an Indian reservation. On the reservation there is violence, poverty, and alcoholism. Arnold does not appreciate where he lives because his “reservation is located approximately one million miles north of [important] and two billion miles west of [happy]” (Alexie 30). Arnold does not like his culture, nor does he like his home. He thinks that his race is far from important and happy. This contributes to his identity crisis. He does not like his identity, but one thing that keeps him from forsaking it, is his