The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian By Sherman Alexie

In Sherman Alexie’s novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” the narrator portrays both internal and external conflicts throughout his journey to success. Arnold Junior Spirit is a fourteen-year-old boy who believes that in order to pursue his dream he will have to choose between staying in his Spokane Indian reservation or moving out to an all-white school in the neighboring farm town. But things aren’t as easy as they seem when Junior tries moving schools because he know has to be part of two communities. Many conflicts form within the Spokane Indian reservation and the Spokane Indian reservation as well comes into conflict with the white community.

how Arnold Friend sees her and does not realize that she cannot see him or his motives. Arnold

“Nothing about Arnold Friend is genuine, except his violent intentions and his skill at psychological and physical intimidation. By the story’s end, Connie understands that she is not the confident flirt she thought, but a powerless pawn in the hands of a dangerous individual.” (Cormier)

"Double-consciousness this sense of always looking at one 's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one 's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity" (Dubois, 8). W.E.B. Du Bois had a perfect definition of double-consciousness. The action of viewing one 's self through the eyes of others and measuring one 's soul. Looking at all of the thoughts good or bad coming from others. This is present in the main character of the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. The Absolutely True Diary is about a boy named Junior that is fourteen years old and living on the Spokane Reservation. Junior was born with too

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.

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)

Poverty hits children hardest in the world. When I was younger, the Armenians had faced the hard facts of poverty after they break up with the Soviet Union, war with Azerbaijan, and a devastating earthquake. My family moved into our motherland Armenia while our nation was going through these huge dramatic changes. Furthermore the poor economy and inflation destroyed numerous hopes and futures. In the novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, Arnold Spirit, describes his hardships involving poverty living on Spokane reservation. The people on the reservation are stuck in a prison of poverty. They are imprisoned there due to lack of resources and general contempt from the outside world, so they are left with little chance for success. Like Arnold, I also went through hardships regarding poverty and education.

Arnold was born on January 14, 1741 in Norwich, Connecticut. He was one of five children, and only him and his sister survived childhood. At age 15, Arnold ran away from home to join the Connecticut militia to fight in the French and Indian War (Gaines 11). For Arnold’s education, he went to a tutor at a very young age. After that, Arnold attended Prudence Crandall’s School in Canterbury and was later taught by a man known as Reverend James Cogswell. He was expected to go to Yale, but dropped out due to father’s alcoholism (Gaines

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

Arnold Friend arrives at Connie’s home when her family was out , and implores that she go with him “to a nice field, out in the country here where it smells so nice and it’s sunny”. He tries to be relatable a first, claiming to have the same music taste as Connie and even declares to be her friend and lover. Arnold Friend knows everything about Connie, seeming to be boundless and powerful, even narrating what is happening at the barbeque, and threatening Connie that if she doesn’t cooperate, her family will be murdered. He uses all these techniques to manipulate Connie's mind which causes her to have internal and psychological struggles, creating a thin border of what is real and what is not. When Arnold Friend threatens her, she tries to call for help, but he causes her to lose her grip with reality, making her mind believe the phone started roaring, “She began to scream into the phone, into the roaring.”, which symbolizes her hopelessness for rescue. Arnold Friend got Connie to surrender herself to him, which portrays the change in consciousness she had from her egotistical ways to doing the most altruistic act of sacrificing herself for her family's lives. Connie was not the same fearful girl anymore, “He ran a fingernail down the screen and the noise did not make Connie shiver, as it

Arnold Friend is a pedophile or in other words, a predator to Connie. He wants to take advantage of Connie and tries his best in order to do so. Not only does his actions opposite of the things in Connie’s fantasy world, but his looks as well. Arnold’s hair is “shaggy, shabby black hair that looked crazy as a wig” (208) which opposed to Connie’s blonde hair. Connie notices that Arnold dresses like the type of guys she usually likes with “tight faded jeans stuffed into black, scuffed boots, a belt that pulled his waist in…a white pullover shirt that was a little soiled…” (209) so at first she thinks that he fits into her own little world. The thing is that all of this is a way for Arnold to cover up his true self. The car Arnold pulls up in; however, is a mixture of both reality and fantasy. The new paint job goes along with Connie’s world in order for him to pull her in, while the model of the car though, is an old jalopy, lining up with Arnold. The color of the car is gold which can represent a way for Arnold to not only lure in Connie, but to attract other kids her age as well. Connie notices the words on the front fender of the jalopy, reading “MAN THE FLYING SAUCERS” and points out it was an “expression kids had used the year before, but didn’t use this year” (210). This shows another way that Arnold tries to fit in with the other

When Arnold Friend and Ellie arrive to Connie’s house she notices something strange about Arnold. For one, they pulled up in a bright gold car with writing all over it. His name is written on the car along with a grinning face with sunglasses and three random numbers. She notices that it looks as

Institutional structures have the power to configure adolescent growth through repression and liberation. The capability that adolescents have to create their own destiny and choose their own social institution can be limited, but not impossible. In Trites article, “Do I dare disturb the universe?” the author argues that kids have personal power, whether they acknowledge it and use it to their own advantage or not. Michel Foucault declares that “Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere” (Trites). Power is inevitable, there will never be no such thing as power in this world; it will never diminish or fade. Trites also conveyed that, “power not only acts on a subject but, in a transitive

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.

He didn’t like being the father of an autistic child, he viewed Arnold as too much for him to handle. Avery found just the fact that he had an autistic child as a burden. Even Arnold’s “strange single wail” haunted him, which drove him towards leaving. Bet was left to take care of him Arnold all alone. Bet had somewhat of a type of backbone when her husband was around, but as soon as he left, the only person that could help her, was herself. This made it really difficult to raise an autistic child. However, not only did Arnold’s father leave, but now his own mother is also abandoning him at an institution. He can’t even see his mother for the first six months. These events will cause Arnold to have a fear of abandonment in his future life, and cause him to not be able to trust his mother. It’ll be hard for him to trust other people in general too. He didn’t have any support anymore. At the institution the worker showed no emotional connection towards Arnold, which is one of the main foundations necessary for an autistic child. Bet wanted to give Arnold his special blanket. Her unassuring response was, “Oh, fine...we’ll see that he gets it.” Her tone implies that she doesn’t care about this special