Imagine losing a bestfriend someone who has all your memories and secrets all because of some tiny obstacles. In The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Sherman Alexie uses the fight with Rowdy, the deaths of family and friends and transferring to an all white school to show how it illustrates that true friends are there for you at your most vulnerable times. Friends can be upset but true friends are there for you at your most vulnerable time. Rowdy was upset when Junior told him he was moving schools. Rowdy never thought that his best friend would move away. Although Junior still lived on the reservation it didn’t feel like it. Everyone on the reservation felt betrayed because junior moved to an all white school. Rowdy said “we will …show more content…
His geometry teacher Mr. P told him he had potential and that he should get off the Rez and go to college. Junior decided to move from Wellpinit to Reardan an all white school. Junior got into a fight with Rowdy because he was leaving but he went anyway. Since Junior’s been at Reardan he has made some friends who have supported him. At the winter formal dance he didn't have any money for breakfast after the dance but Roger offered to pay. His friends from Reardan have helped out with a lot. With giving rides from school and dealing with death of family. “Reardan is the opposite of the Rez” (Alexie 56) What Junior means by that is that people on the Rez don’t go to college or get well paying jobs. Junior made the decision to go to Reardan and become something, hopefully graduate and go to college. Friends will stay until the end, “I look at it now, years later, and I still can’t believe we did it” (Alexie 226) This quote is a memory of Rowdy and Junior when they were younger, When they climbed the tallest tree. Rowdy and Junior mean a lot to each other, and when Junior moved it broke Rowdy’s heart, he actually cried. This is one of their biggest memories of them together. Rowdy and Junior will never stop being
In the high criminal neighborhood where the other Wes lived, people who live there need a positive role model or a mentor to lead them to a better future. Usually the older family members are the person they can look up to. The other Wes’s mother was not there when the other Wes felt perplexed about his future and needed her to support and give him advises. Even though the other Wes’s mother moved around and tried to keep the other Wes from bad influences in the neighborhood, still, the other Wes dropped out of school and ended up in the prison. While the author Wes went to the private school every day with his friend Justin; the other Wes tried to skip school with his friend Woody. Moore says, “Wes had no intention of going to school. He was supposed to meet Woody later – they were going to skip school with some friends, stay at Wes’s house, and have a cookout” (59). This example shows that at the time the other Wes was not interested in school. Because Mary was busy at work, trying to support her son’s education, she had no time and energy to look after the other Wes. For this reason, she did not know how the other Wes was doing at school and had no idea that he was escaping school. She missed the opportunities to intervene in her son’s life and put him on the right track. Moreover, when the author was in the military school, the other Wes was dealing drugs to people in the streets and was already the father of a child. The incident that made the other Wes drop out of school was when he had a conflict with a guy. The other Wes was dating with the girl without knowing that she had a boyfriend. One night, her boyfriend found out her relationship with the other Wes and had a fight with him. During the fight, the other Wes chased the guy and shot him. The guy was injured and the other Wes was arrested
“But we reservation Indians don’t get to realize our dreams. We don’t get those chances.” (p. 13) In The Absolutely True Diary of A Part Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, Junior, the narrator, is an Indian teenage boy living on a reservation, where no one's dreams or ideas are heard. The Indians on the reservation feel hopeless because they are isolated and disenfranchised. Junior learns how to cope with his hopelessness and breaks through the hopeless reservation life to find his dreams. Examining his journey provides important examples for the reader.
Junior was born in a desperate, hopeless place. His parents and community were withering in despair. However, Junior did not choose to languish like the rest of his community; he boldly left his comfort zone for a better education—facing obstacles from losing
In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian there are examples of courage throughout the whole book. Junior decides he wants to go to an all white school. ‘“I want to go to Rearden,” said Junior. I couldn’t believe I was saying it. For me, it seemed as real as saying, “I want to fly the moon.” said Junior.’ (Alexie, 46) This quote is important because it shows that Junior isn’t afraid to try new things and he doesn’t
It is absolutely clear that you feel sad when somebody cheated and duplicate your own things. This causes many people to feel frustration and getting upset when they are facing this difficult situation. We know it is not a good attitude for students, authors, and anyone else to use something misappropriate that they didn’t belong it. I read an article that called “When the Story Stolen is Your Own”. When the author Sherman Alexie was writing this article, he was feeling nervous because somebody has stolen his article and use it in his own. Nobody didn’t believe him when he told the publisher that his story was stolen by someone and imitate that he belong it. Same as the students when they cheated each other and submit the same paper, it was one of the biggest challenge that happens some of the students when they are in the college.
“I’m never going to act like my mother!” These words are increasingly common and yet unavoidable. Why is it that as children, we are able to point out every flaw in our parents, but as we grow up, we recognize that we are repeating the same mistakes we observed? The answer is generational curses: un-cleansed iniquities that increase in strength from one generation to the next, affecting the members of that family and all who come into relationship with that family (Hickey 13). Marilyn Hickey, a Christian author, explains how this biblically rooted cycle is never ending when she says, “Each generation adds to the overall iniquity, further weakening the resistance of the next generation to sin” (21, 22). In other words, if your parents mess up you are now susceptible to making the same mistakes, and are most likely going to pass those mistakes to your children. In The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie shows the beauty of hope in the presence of a generational curse. Even though the elders are the ones who produce the curses, they are also the ones who attempt to break Junior from their bond forming mistakes. The curses that Arnold’s elders imprint on him lead him to break out of his cultural bonds and improve himself as a developing young man.
When comparing two young adult novels, one would never think that a wizard with a lightning bolt scar on his forehead and a poor Indian basketball player would have anything in common. However, this is not so as The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling are alike in many aspects. One might ask why a different novel from the Harry Potter series was not used, and the answer is that the main character matures quite a deal through the novel selected and seemed better fit for comparison with Alexie’s novel. Both boys, Arnold Spirit, Jr. and Harry James Potter, encounter some form of bullying. Both must also cope with tragic deaths that have impacted the way
In chapter 3 of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian (2007), Sherman Alexie introduces Rowdy, the “best human friend” of the narrator, and elaborates on their mutually dependant relationship. Rowdy is described as a rather violent person, which is implied to be a result of his abusive parents and home life, but he and Junior protect each other in various ways despite being opposites. The author’s purpose this chapter was to introduce another character that has a significant impact on the narrator’s life, in order to familiarize the reader with the narrator’s surroundings and his relationships with those close to him. The author continues to use sarcastic humour and exaggeration, but made the tone slightly light-hearted this chapter
At first things didn’t look to bright for Carver’s future, he tried to enlist into the school in Diamond Grove, but was turned down because of racism. They told Carver that African American’s were not permitted to attend the school. With the news of this, George left home on his own, to attend a color school in the community of Neosho. He had to find someone who ...
In the end, the stories of Perma Red and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian have their similarities and their differences. Both stories tell the tale of two young people from reservations in search of a better future. Whether they succeeded we will never know, but what we do know is that they both advanced as people because of the love they received, the losses they incurred and the trials they overcame.
The role of hope in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was to show that there are much better things beyond the reservation. That there is more to see and experience when you look at other places. Without hope then Junior would not have thought about going to a different school. Junior was able to learn more than he did on the reservation because they had a better education system. He was able to join the basketball team and score a lot of points because he believed that he was one of the top players on the team.
For example, in the moment that Junior recognizes his mother’s name in his thirty year geometry book. When Junior saw his thirty year geometry book, it was evident that the Wellpinit school was not giving him an adequate education, and he knew that he needed a good education if he wanted to succeed in life. As a result, Junior wishes to transfer from Wellpinit to Reardan in order to acquire a stronger education, he experiences perseverance. To exemplify this, Junior states that, “‘I want to go to Reardan,’ I said again. I couldn’t believe I was saying it. For me it was as real as saying, ‘I want to fly to the moon’”(46). This develops the theme that perseverance is efficient in resolving cultural conflicts because it shows Junior taking initiative and responding to the issue of not fitting into the Wellpinit education system. By using the simile, it is emphasized that moving away from Wellpinit and going to Reardan is terrifying; however, he still pushes past this fear and perseveres in order to achieve his goal and solve the cultural difference that he found within himself. In addition, the idea of perseverance is revisited when Junior is confronted by Roger and his friends on one of Junior’s first days at Reardan. In this scene, Roger insults Junior with a racist comment. Therefore, Junior punches Roger in order to stand up for himself. To further explain this, Junior says, “So I punched Roger in the face… And he wasn’t laughing when his nose bled like red fireworks” (65). This description emphasizes perseverance as Alexie explains the confrontation between Roger and Junior with great detail and focus on Junior’s rare ability to stand up for himself. The confrontation itself shows the cultural difference in Junior, as he is not able to get along with the white students at Reardan. The comparison of Roger’s injury to red
The author, Sherman Alexie, did very well with just about every aspect of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, in my opinion. I think what he did best, though, was the humor. For me, personally, humor is the most appealing and most effective way to keep my attention and to get me to finish reading the entire book. Some parts of this are sad when you think about it, but the constant humor kept me smiling and laughing throughout the book. At the beginning of the story, the narrator, who is also known by everyone as Junior, talked about all of the things wrong with his body and how ugly he was; Alexie added some humorous similes to make you laugh a little bit during that particular scene. Junior was talking about how his eyes and glasses
He goes through the struggles of deciding who he wants to be and who he is. He lived on a reservation with his family and attended the school there. He decided one day the only way he would go anywhere in life was if he were to attend Reardan, an all-white school. Here, Junior was forced to find who he really was. Junior experienced more struggles and tragedies than any white student at this school. He had to fight through the isolation he first experienced to building up the courage to play in a basketball championship. I believe that every event Junior wrote about throughout the novel had an important purpose, and even more importantly, could be related to sociology. As I read the novel, I constantly thought about questions such as the following: What importance does he have to write about this? Could I relate this to my life? Who is Alexie’s audience? Could anyone read this novel and learn something from it? By the time I completed the novel, I could answer all of these questions without a
Have you ever wanted something really badly, but couldn’t afford it? This is a common occurrence, but what about food? Have you ever went to be hungry because you couldn’t afford to eat? Unfortunately, Junior, the main character in the book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, felt exactly this way for food. Even though Junior didn’t have as many resources as the other “white kids,” he still chose to look at the positives. This novel shows that even in times of great hardship, people can still choose to have hope and look at the good in their lives.