Part-Time Indian Belonging

Survival is a very important part of any life and survival is a culmination of all the driving forces behind our success. The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian explores this concept closely. This exposition will be arguing that survival is in fact a large part of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and shows that through many different facets, it will also be showing some examples of this and defining further how this correlates to this concept.

Junior easily loves Rowdy the most out of all of his friends. Even after all of the times that he was mean to Junior and when he has his outburst, Junior knows that Rowdy needs friends and that it’s all just temporary. Junior also knows Rowdy’s secrets and has never given them away. This is the sign of a true friendship. Rowdy also has never given away any of Junior’s secrets which shows that even though he’s been mean, he still wants to be friends. Junior also loves his other friends because of how much they support him too, especially Penelope and Gordy.

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.

As Diary of a Part Time Indian progresses and Junior enrolls in Reardan, he continues to belief that he does not deserve hope, unlike the kids at Reardan, but not necessarily because of his race anymore. Resulting from his choice to leave the reservation, Junior struggles to fit in at Reardan, but not leave his identity behind, since for him living on the reservation is entwined with being poor.

The Spoken tribe, like many other Native American tribes, suffered considerably due to alcoholism, poverty, and racism. In order to combat the dire state that he is in, Spoken Indian Arnold “Junior” Spirit decides to leave the reservation and go to Reardan, a school full of whites. Sherman Alexie’s novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian paints a picture of life where racism, poverty, and alcoholism affects Arnold Spirit as he journeys through a completely different society. His decision endangers him not only in his reservation but also at Reardan where he is ostracized for being the only Indian boy in a school full of white people. Despite these dangers, Arnold is still willing to reject his family tradition and go to Reardan because he has hopes of finding a fulfilling and hopeful life. Due to his willingness to go through with his action of going to Reardan despite the hardships, Arnold is able to march inexorably towards finding a fulfilling and hopeful life. Through his perseverance of physical and emotional hardships, and his willingness to leave his family legacy behind and go to Reardan, it is revealed the extent that man is willing to go to in order to achieve his goals.

Progressing through the middle of the book, Junior faces multiple instances of embarrassment, and friendship. When Junior first arrived to Rearden, he was treated poorly because of his skin and origin, “...I was still a potential killer. So mostly they called me names. Lots of names” (63). The name-calling and bullying continued for a while before Junior stood up for himself, by “punching Roger in the face… he wasn’t laughing when he landed on his ass” (65). Though, standing up for himself was only the beginning. Roger responded with respect for Junior (72), but Penelope didn’t, “...I might of impressed the king, but the queen still hated me” (73). The embarrassment ensues when the Winter Formal rolls around. Following the dance, Junior and his friends hang out at a breakfast diner. Junior is ashamed by the fact he doesn’t have any money to pay for the food. This is where his friendship comes into play. Roger doesn’t mind, and, in fact, Roger “...opened his wallet and handed me [Junior] forty bucks… what kind of kid can just hand over forty bucks like that” (126). Consecutive to the diner incident, Penelope also reveals to Roger that Junior doesn’t have a ride home (129), and friendship also saves the day in this particular

109), because he's an "absolute stranger" to Reardan, and also, Penelope's dad is racist. Still, they become close friends and start dating. He also makes friends with Roger (surprisingly), since Roger is a friend of Penelope. When Junior made the basketball team, they become closer. Roger even gave Junior a ride home after a basketball game. Arnold also becomes a friend of a geek, Gordy. They were both "outcasts", and they understood how it felt to not fit in. After making all these friends, he feels that he is starting to fit in with the white people.

Money is said to be the source of all power in the world, but what can be said for the impoverished? In the case of Sherman Alexie's novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, we follow the story of Junior, a Native American highschooler struggling to find his place in a world of discrimination and poverty. After some close and careful speculation, it can be decided that the most important theme of this novel is how racism and poverty can cause a number of issues for people in the world because the events in the novel display real life issues people face in the world today.

The American Indian occupies a unique place in the White American imaginary. Indians, one is told, are cordial, wise, poor in the “humble poverty” sort of way, brown, there assist whites with either mystic knowledge or humorous ignorance. Figures such as Squanto, Tonto and Disney’s Pocahontas along with a large smattering of Westerns and cartoonish depictions have created this image of the Native American – an image which rarely translates into the present day. In contrast to this, Sherman Alexie’s novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a Native American coming-of-age story centered around the first-person point of view of the Native protagonist Arnold “Junior” Spirit, Jr. and his dual life on the Spokane Indian Reservation and his time off the reservation at an all-white public school in the town of Reardan, Washington. The novel revolves around themes like race, identity formation and mortality and details life on Indian reservations as it attempts to give a realistic account of contemporary Native American life, each which shape the novel in unique ways.

Do you think looking forward and trying to change a bad situation into a good one for having a better life is a wrong decision? The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian is a novel written by Sherman Alexie. The novel is about Arnold Spirit; everyone calls him Junior. He is a teenage boy with a tough life who lives with his family in poverty on a Spokane Indian reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. He hates living in poverty and wants something better for himself. “I feel like I might grow up to be somebody important. An artist”(6) he claims. His living conditions are horrible; he studies in a school with a lack of resources. He considered the different aspects of moving to Reardan, he struggled about leaving

Over the course of your life, you come to struggle with the philosophical idea of personal identity; the thing that makes you, you. Oneself may shape their identity around aspects of their life that they have no control over like race and physical traits, as well as decisions that are made throughout their lives like affiliations and religion. Your personal identity can be seen through your passions and interactions with others. An individual’s search for their identity is something that may occur in everyone’s’ life. In the novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie highlights the theme of how the search for identity is always prevalent, through the conflicted characters of Junior and Mary throughout the novel.

Hope kept the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Times Indian from ending in misery and hatred. Junior’s hope grows throughout the story, even as he faces the harsh reality of life. Limitations in the form of poverty, death, physical disabilities, and bullying plague him. While Junior’s future of the reservation appeared bleak, hope for a better future played an important role in Junior’s decision to transfer to Reardan High School.

Your Place, Your Love, And You Finding your identity in the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Have you ever felt like you don’t belong? That you don’t fit in? Arnold spirit thought just like that, but then that dramatically changed. The book “Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian” is written by Sherman Alexie about a Native American boy living on a reservation that goes to search for hope and to find a better life.

his family. Junior found more respect after moving to his new school, Reardan, and began to

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian is a novel by Sherman Alexie about a Junior and his journey going to a white school while being Indian. Junior leaves his home on his reservation to go to a white school during the day. He “left” the reservation and is now very disliked there. This story goes through all of Juniors troubles and how he dealt with them. Junior really succeeds at Reardon, the white school, and he is not hated by the students there, unlike on the “rez.”