“Indian Education” is a short summary of Sherman Alexie’s journey through his school years until high school graduation, he used Junior as his character of this journey. Alexie was born on the Spokane Reservation in Washington to a poor family with three siblings (Sherman Alexie biography, 2010). The family rarely even had food to eat, and a bright educational future was not expected on the reservation. Those who lived on the reservation were normally looked at as not being social, nor sophisticated during the time Alexie lived there. Alexie went against the odds and learned to read at a young age since he was house bound for a while due to his medical complications (Sherman Alexie biography, 2010). Alexie is an advocate for education …show more content…
For example, Ms. Towle said, “Indians, Indians, Indians” and Junior said “Yes I am, I am Indian, Indian I am” (Alexie, 1993, p.2). Alexie used this argument toward his teacher to prove he is Indian, but can be a positive influence to all other Indian kids on the reservation. He does this by fighting the stereotype that Indian kids cannot read, nor get a good education. This is the purpose of the writing to prove to the kids, his teachers, and society that just because you are from an Indian reservation that does not mean you can achieve goals. The purpose shows that anyone can learn to read anywhere, it does not have to start in school. The audience intended is for Ms. Mathers, classmates, and also anyone else who may be in the same situation he grew up in as a child. Alexie is trying to reach out to an audience of Indians from his own personal experience to help move past the stereotypes, and get a good education. The time referenced by Alexie is his past, and now for the current people that live on reservations. Alexie is showing the time and place of your upbringing does not have to limit your abilities to learn to read, get an education, and reach your …show more content…
Alexie uses authority through the character Junior to make his message solid on discrimination of Indians in the school system and society. The discrimination was evident when the Chicano teacher (Alexie, 1993) immediately thought Junior was ill from drinking too much alcohol, because that is what society thought all the Indian kids did, not from Junior having diabetes. This was an additional tone used when Alexie said, “sharing dark skin doesn’t necessarily make two men brothers” (Alexie, 1993, p. 5). The fact is Indians deal with discrimination more often than most realize. Listed below are some astounding numbers, (Vavrasek,
“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.
Imagine growing up in a society where a person is restricted to learn because of his or her ethnicity? This experience would be awful and very emotional for one to go through. Sherman Alexie and Fredrick Douglas are examples of prodigies who grew up in a less fortunate community. Both men experienced complications in similar and different ways; these experiences shaped them into men who wanted equal education for all. To begin, one should understand the writers background. Sherman Alexie wrote about his life as a young Spokane Indian boy and the life he experienced (page 15). He wrote to encourage people to step outside their comfort zone and be herd throughout education. Similar to Alexie’s life experience, Fredrick
After reading “Superman and Me,” by Sherman Alexie, I was shown how the author learned to read, and how he used his love for reading to impact his life and the lives of others. Alexie grew up with his family on an Indian reservation, relying on irregular paychecks and government surplus food. Alexie learned to read, on his own, at the young age of three. His love for reading originated from his father’s passion for books, and reading whatever books he could get access to. Alexie’s reading level reached such a high level to where he was reading Grapes of Wrath in kindergarten. He knew he was smart, and he didn’t want to take on the stereotype that all Indians are stupid. Unlike the other Indian children in his class on the reservation, Alexie tried to become as educated as he could, despite being teased by the other kids. Alexie came to describe himself as smart, lucky, and arrogant. This attitude of who he was and what he was capable of allowed ...
In "Indian Education" by Sherman Alexie, the story is about our narrator of the story Victor. Telling the sad, miserable cruelty and the emotions that his fellow students and teachers gave him from 1st grade all the way through 12th grade. The meaning of this story at first seems the most current for kids in school; bullying each other and calling each other names but the story goes much deeper than that. It shows a reality of the life on the reservation and how the education system is terrible and demeaning to other children who are considered soft spoken. Two pieces of dialogue that were the most interesting to me happened to be "Give me your lunch if you're just going to throw it up," because it ends with the sentence "There is more than one way to starve.
How White people assumed they were better than Indians and tried to bully a young boy under the US Reservation. Alexie was bullied by his classmates, teammates, and teachers since he was young because he was an Indian. Even though Alexie didn’t come from a good background, he found the right path and didn’t let his hands down. He had two ways to go to, either become a better, educated and strong person, either be like his brother Steven that was following a bad path, where Alexie chose to become a better and educated person. I believe that Alexie learned how to get stronger, and stand up for himself in the hard moments of his life by many struggles that he passed through. He overcame all his struggles and rose above them
Culture has the power and ability to give someone spiritual and emotional distinction which shapes one's identity. Without culture, society would be less and less diverse. Culture is what gives this earth warmth and color that expands across miles and miles. The author of “The School Days of an Indian Girl”, Zitkala Sa, incorporates the ideals of Native American culture into her writing. Similarly, Sherman Alexie sheds light onto the hardships he struggled through growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven in a chapter titled “Indian Education”.
Picture yourself in a town where you are underprivileged and sometimes miss a meal. In the novel, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” Sherman Alexie wrote the book to show hardships that Native Americans face today. Alexie shows us hardships such as poverty, alcoholism and education. In the novel, Junior goes against the odds to go to an all white school to get a better education to have a better life
Establishing an identity has been called one of the most important milestones of adolescent development (Ruffin, 2009). Additionally, a central part of identity development includes ethnic identity (ACT for Youth, 2002). While some teens search for cultural identity within a smaller community, others are trying to find their place in the majority culture. (Bucher and Hinton, 2010)The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian chronicles Junior’s journey to discovery of self. As with many developing teens, he finds himself spanning multiple identities and trying to figure out where he belongs. “Traveling between Reardan and Wellpinit, between the little white town and the reservation, I always felt like a stranger. I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other” (p.118). On the reservation, he was shunned for leaving to go to a white school. At Reardon, the only other Indian was the school mascot, leaving Junior to question his decision to attend school he felt he didn’t deserve. Teens grappling with bicultural identities can relate to Junior’s questions of belonging. Not only is Junior dealing with the struggle between white vs. Indian identities, but with smaller peer group identities as well. In Wellpinit, Junior is th...
“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” is a humorous and intuitive novel written by Sherman Alexie. The reader gets an insight into the everyday life of a fourteen year old hydrocephalic Indian boy named Arnold Spirit, also referred to as Junior Spirit. He is living on the Spokane Indian reservation and is seen as an outcast by all the other Indians, due to his medical condition. Against all odds Arnold expands his hope, leaves his school on the reservation and faces new obstacles to obtain a more promising future at a school off the reservation. The novel is told through Arnold’s voice, thoughts, actions and experiences. Alexie incorporates one point of view, different themes and settings, such as poverty, friendship, Spokane and Reardan within Arnold’s journey to illustrate the different hardships he must overcome to gain a higher education.
Growing up on a reservation where failing was welcomed and even somewhat encouraged, Alexie was pressured to conform to the stereotype and be just another average Indian. Instead, he refused to listen to anyone telling him how to act, and pursued his own interests in reading and writing at a young age. He looks back on his childhood, explaining about himself, “If he'd been anything but an Indian boy living on the reservation, he might have been called a prodigy. But he is an Indian boy living on the reservation and is simply an oddity” (17). Alexie compares the life and treatment of an Indian to life as a more privileged child. This side-by-side comparison furthers his point that
With the obstacles that happen to Junior, it creates an emotional and traumatic impact on Junior as well as getting the readers hooked to turn the page and keep reading. To begin, in “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” Sherman Alexie describes a moment in Junior's life before he went to the white school. From comparing the death rates and even mentioning the deaths, Alexie shows an emotional impact on Junior from the deaths he has to go through. Alexie writes about how Junior being an Indian has impacted his life.
In Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, the main character Arnold, also known as Junior, has many health issues, and notably stands out in the crowd. It does not help that he is a poor Indian boy that lives on a reservation, and that he decides to go to an all-white high school. Many of his experiences at school, and on the Reservation, impact his identity. Experience is the most influential factor in shaping a person’s identity because it helps gain confidence, it teaches new things, and it changes one’s outlook on the world.
It was dangerous, according to societal standards, to be an educated Indian, or even an educated minority. In a society where you were destined to fail it was not abnormal for Alexie not to be recognized. The children knew they would be ridiculed so they would play the role of the dumb Indian while at school. Outside of school they would display themselves to be more educated than they gave themselves credit for. This behavior was widely expected of Indians and accepted by non-Indians: everyone but Sherman Alexie. His motivation to succeed encompassed his life, in high school he chose public schools over the reservation. Sherman Alexis still suffered from the same ridicule but the difference between him and his peers is that he would not let that interfere with his objective to prove to the society that Indians can be educated,
Overall, Alexie clearly faced much difficulty adjusting to the white culture as a Native American growing up, and expresses this through Victor in his essay, “Indian Education.” He goes through all of the stages of his childhood in comparison with his white counterparts. Racism and bullying are both evident throughout the whole essay. The frustration Alexie got from this is clear through the negativity and humor presented in the experiences he had to face, both on and off of the American Indian reservation. It is evident that Alexie faces discrimination from white people, who he portrays as evil in every way, to show that his childhood was filled with anger, fear, and sorrow.
I can relate to this, not as far as race, but in a different way. At my school, there were stereotypes about the “volleyball girls”, and I was part of the volleyball team. At one point people thought this group of girls was all about partying and not school. Although, I was only focused on school and ended my high school career with only two B’s. Although this is not as an extreme case as Junior, I can still relate. In more of an extreme case, after Junior finally overcame his fear of leaving the reservation for a new and more positive life, he was not treated fairly. In the beginning of his experience at Reardan he writes, “After all, I was a reservation Indian, and no matter how geeky or weak I appeared to be, I was still a potential killer” (Alexie 2007:63). This is a perfect example of how easily people believe things they hear. Junior was literally a weak fifteen year old that could never hurt a fly, yet people looked at him as a killer because that was a stereotype about Indians. This idea goes along with Johnson’s thoughts of symbols, “symbols go far beyond labeling things” and “Symbols are also what we use to feel connected to a reality outside ourselves” (Johnson 2008: 36).