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Half Indian Belonging

Decent Essays
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Sherman Alexie’s novel ‘The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian’ is about Arnold, a Native American boy who gets regularly bullied for not looking like a “typical human”, makes the decision to move to a school in Reardan outside of Wellpinit in order to find a place to belong. Alexie reveals how it is important to have a place to belong. He shows Arnold the importance of belonging by exposing the many harsh consequences of not having a place to belong. Additionally displaying how not belonging in a place with high expectations can stop you from achieving your goals. Furthermore, Sherman Alexie highlights how the meaning of belonging is needed in order to feel safe in the environment you’re in. Sherman exposes the consequences of not belonging anywhere through Arnold’s experiences. He realises that there were “other” Native Americans who had “left in search” to belong. However it also made him think about the people who didn’t. They felt as if they were “destined to live”, in harsh environments, drowning in poverty. Alexie highlights the fact about poverty in belonging as it is one of their major problems and for that reason most of the Indians are always drunk. …show more content…

Arnold felt “half Indian” in one place and this always made him “fe[el] like a stranger”. In another place he felt like he was “half white” he felt as if he was too Indian for Reardan because “more than half” “graduat[ed]” and moved on to “college “ where as Arnold’s family hadn’t even “gone near a college”, he also felt too white for Wellpinit as he attended a white school in a white town. We see that he feels as if he belongs in neither place, thus will lead to Arnold self limiting, and stopping him from making the right decision and taking a step forward to his goals.Sherman Alexie shows us the affects in not belonging and proves to us the value of

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