The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian Essay

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 In the novel Junior fights the burden of poverty in his house and at school. At his house he sometimes misses a meal or only has small amounts and at school he can not pay for anything at the dances. Alexie even says, “Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.” Therefore, Alexie does not think poverty teaches you anything, yet he is poor and has learned a lot from it. Primarily Alexie fought this difficulty by transferring from the poor reservation school to the rich, expensive school Rearden. His parents let him go because they wanted a better future for him. The importance of poverty in his life is that he could overcome it to have a better future even though most native americans can not overcome poverty.

Junior says that he has been to 42 funerals and that, “About 90 percent of the deaths had been because of alcohol.” This shows that Junior should be majorly affected by alcohol because the closest people to him died because of alcohol. His sister, his grandma and Eugene have all died because of alcohol. In almost all Indian homes in his tribe someone drinks in their house. Junior overcame it by getting away from it and going to Rearden where alcoholism is not an issue. The importance of alcoholism in his life is so that he could get away and find hope although most native americans face it in their lives and do not get away from it and it becomes a problem their whole