Summary Of The Novel 'The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian'

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said “First you take a DRINK then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.” Later Fitzgerald capitulated and died of a heart attack due to being an alcoholic the last 2 years of his life. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian written by Sherman Alexie talks about a 14 year old Indian boy changing his life. He goes to a white school, and changes into a different person throughout the story. The story talks about other real life dilemmas, like death and alcohol. There are multiple themes that are present throughout the story, but one theme that protrudes is that alcoholism kills.

Throughout the story, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Junior goes through many ups and downs. This story is about how Junior, an indian from the Spokane reservation, decides to go to Rearden, the school for non-indians because of how run-down his school is and has trouble fitting in. Some of the ways Junior dealt with those downs include his uncanny sense of humor, his love for his friends, and the want to fit in and prove he’s just as good as everyone else at his new school.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a book that depicts cultural differences; the issues of alcohol; and friendships in a harsh, yet humorous way. Junior, the main character of the book, stands out in many ways, both to the reader, and in the book itself. He is courageous, yet also emotional and smart.

This book, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian" by Sherman Alexie, is about a boy called Arnold Spirit aka Junior. He is a Native American that lives in an Indian Reservation. He isn't really satisfied with his life, since he's pretty poor, but he gets along. He doesn't really accept himself, since he has multiple medical problems, and he has been beaten up since he was little. When he starts to gain more friends in this new (American) school, he starts to like and accept himself more than before. In this book, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian" (by Sherman Alexie), the main theme is about Arnold trying to accept himself.

Arnold/Junior Spirit is a fourteen year old Spokane Indian who lives on a small reservation in Washington state. In the book The Absolutely True Diary of a part-Time Indian, Junior leaves his reservation for a primary white school called Reardan to find hope. He struggles with friendships, family, basketball, school work and identity through the year. His experiences on and off the reservation, are constantly changing his beliefs to become less racist and more positive. For example, Junior begins thinking that hope is barely reachable for him, but ends the book realizing that nothing stops him from having hope except how much he works for it.

School and education was a big topic in Sherman Alexie’s, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, as the author reflects his personal life story into the protagonists’ story in the book. In the novel, Junior is a teenage kid who loves to read, but every time he goes to school in the Spokane reservation, he notices the poor education that is offered. From unmotivated teachers, to using the same textbook his own mother used to use, he knew he would end up like everyone else at the reservation, depressed, having low paying jobs, not motivated to make a change in the world. In order to be able to go to college, he knew he had to study at a high school outside of his reservation, because he would not have the education the college demanded if he stayed. During his years at the new high school away from his home, he missed a lot of school days due to funerals and ceremonies he had to attend back in his reservation. Even if Junior understood that, going to college might be difficult to do so if he was going to be attending the events at his reservation, he knew he was able to go to college from the education he gained at the new high school he attended. Similar to the article by Guillory and Wolverton, Junior, or Alexie, were able to attend college because of the high school transfer, which gained them higher quality education. Something not many Native American teenagers have the opportunity to do so, or the self-motivation, as they are still, more than likely, accepting

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

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.

Adolescents experience a developmental journey as they transition from child to adult, and in doing so are faced with many developmental milestones. Physical, cognitive, social and emotional changes are occurring during this tumultuous stage of life, and making sense of one’s self and identity becomes a priority. Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian addresses the challenges of adolescence in an engaging tale, but deals with minority communities and cultures as well.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie is a novel about Arnold Spirit (Junior), a boy from the Spokane Indian Reservation who decides to attend high school outside the reservation in order to have a better future. During that first year at Reardan High School, Arnold has to find his place at his all-white school, cope with his best friend Rowdy and most of his tribe disowning him, and endure the deaths of his grandmother, his father’s best friend, and his sister. Alexie touches upon issues of identity, otherness, alcoholism, death, and poverty in order to stay true to his characters and the cultures within the story. Through the identification of the role of the self, identity, and social behavior

Adolescents experience a multitude of physical, cognitive, emotional, and social, and mental changes during a short span of years in their developmental journey to adulthood, and this transition period is full of many developmental changes and milestones. Some typical changes and milestones in an adolescent’s life include puberty, learning to drive, dating, developing new social relationships and social roles, cognitive changes, becoming sexually active, obtaining employment, and graduating high school. In addition to all of these changes in this tumultuous time of life, adolescents are identifying, developing, and coming to terms with their own sense of self, and learning about their identity becomes a priority. Teens and young adults must also address certain challenges that may arise in their lives such as bullying, drug and alcohol use, violence, sexual abuse, eating disorders, depression or other mood/mental health issues, and issues concerning sexuality, and gender identity. Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is an engaging story that deals with many of the challenges that all adolescents face, and this novel also addresses challenges that are unique to those teens who may be grappling with issues that face minority cultures and communities as well.

Finding someone’s true identity is often hard to do. As defined, identity is a condition or character as to who a person or what a thing is; the qualities, beliefs, etc. that distinguish or identify a person or thing. In the book, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie, Junior is an Native American who goes through an unassuming adventure. Junior is a fourteen-year old Native American boy living on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington.

In the beginning of the book, Arnold says “My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people.” This is just an introduction into the family’s poverty-filled world. Arnold struggles to fit in with his peers at Reardan-- a school he transferred to due to how poor his tribe’s school is-- because of how vastly different their economic standing is from his. One important example of this is when Arnold and Penelope are going to their school’s winter formal. Arnold barely has enough money to pay for his ticket.

Despite all this, Arnold does acknowledge that there are some good things about the reservation in Wellpinit. As he tells us, "the reservation is beautiful" (30.1), with millions of pine trees everywhere, some of them "older than the United States" (30.6). Plus, the reservation is home to a very close-knit community of Indian families where everybody knows everyone else. Arnold writes that "you know every kid's father, mother, grand parents, dog, cat, and shoe size. I mean, yes, Indians are screwed up, but we're really close to each other" (22.17). He compares Indian families to the white community in Reardan, where neighbors can be strangers and fathers have been known to hide "in plain sight" (22.19).