In this winner of the National Book Award, Junior, aka Arnold Spirit, has had a hard first fourteen years of life. Forgives Junior for breaking his nose, but asks for forgiveness in return: he has been part of a system that forced Indians to give up, and he sees encouraging Junior to free himself as a kind of atonement. This is a telling set of thoughts because it illuminates some of the less concrete ways (not related directly to his housing or access to medicine, for instance) that being an Indian living in poverty affects Junior. Late in the novel, Junior also refers to the fact that reservations were first established as prisons: beginning with the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the U. S. federal government systematically forced tribes off their ancestral lands into designated areas, with many reservations established by executive order throughout the 1850s and 1860s. Coach The coach of Junior s and Roger s basketball team at Reardan High School. Most importantly, one of the main conflicts in the novel is Junior s search for forgiveness from his best friend Rowdy, who feels betrayed by Junior s decision to leave the reservation and hates him as a result. He has been picked on his whole life for his long, scrawny body, oversized head and speech impediment. He tells his parents that he wants to get off the reservation and they agree. Reservation and hope as two opposing forces in Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part- Time Indian. Unlike Rowdy s father, however, he would never hit a member of his family, and mostly becomes depressed after his drinking binges. But I do know that hope for me is like some mythical creature: white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white. He admires Junior s attitude of commitment and empowers him with his belief in Junior s strength, talent, and potential. Rowdy loves kids comic books like Archie and Caspar the Friendly Ghost; secretly, he s a big, goofy dreamer, and Junior loves to make him laugh.
After that happens, Junior asks Eugene to stitch up his cut on his head before going back onto court because they had just started playing again after halftime. Chapter 1 Quotes My brain was drowning in grease. His first collection of short stories and poetry was published in 1992; since then, he has published more than fifteen books and received numerous awards. Beginning in the late 19th century, thousands of children were taken from their families to attend these schools on and off the reservation, with enrollment reaching a peak in the 1970s before ongoing complaints and investigations into the schools led Congress to pass the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 and to many of these schools closing. Thesis: English Letters Department, Faculty of Adab and…. Junior is heartbroken, realizing that his best friend has become his worst enemy. Unconscious States tells the story of three sisters in a rural New England town and aims to explore the class, racial, and agricultural tensions in central Massachusetts while addressing issues of…. When she suddenly gets married, moves to Montana, and begins writing a memoir, her life seems to be unfolding like something out of one of her stories until she dies in a tragic, senseless accident, suggesting that the possibility of a better life might sometimes be just a fantasy and that the connection between books and life cannot be so straightforward. In the book, following one s dreams, finding a place where hope can thrive, means leaving the reservation. For Junior, whiteness, both in the sense of skin color and more broadly, symbolizes hopes and dreams: things that are both desirable and seemingly unattainable, or even, perhaps, unreal. Mala Himatul Aulia, NIM: 1111026000040, Representation of Native American in the Novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. And this feeling of Junior's is substantiated by the realities he sees around him: other kids on the rez, including Mary, get substandard educations and don't go to college; don't get jobs and, in fact, often can't find good jobs because therearen't many ways to make an income on the rez.
To select a subset of the search results, click "Selective Export" button and make a selection of the items you want to export. The slogan Mr. P recalls from his early teaching days, kill the Indian to save the child, was coined by Colonel Richard Pratt, who in 1879 established the first of many boarding schools for American Indian children that practiced the educational philosophy including corporal punishment and harsh prohibitions on expressions of Indian culture that Mr. P describes. When Oscar gets sick early in the novel, Junior s Dad has to kill him because there is not enough money to take him to the vet. Otherwise, the culture of defeat, depression, and alcoholism on the reservation will force him to give up his dreams, just as his older sister Mary who, Mr. P reveals, used to want to be a romance writer, but now spends all her time alone in the family s basement and the other adults in his life have done. Junior loves drawing cartoons (many are included in this book) and thinks that proves how close he is to Rowdy even though others don't see it that way at times. Junior sees Oscar as the only living thing that I could depend on and a better person than any human I had ever known. Speaker) Related Themes: Page Number: 13 Explanation and Analysis Something that Junior wants readers to understand is that poverty is not only cyclical, but it is inseparable from race. The colonial enterprise of Euro-Americans, since its first contact, flourished on the false notions of Indianness, fixating the image of Native Americans as primitive and savages without any claim to…. Want to learn the ideas in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian better than ever? Note: all page numbers for the quotes below refer to the Little, Brown and Company edition of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian published in 2009. Junior doesn't seem to have an image in his mind of Indian beauty he thinks of white people as being the ones who are attractive, and because of that he cannot imagine himself as being anything but ugly. Speaker) Related Themes: Page Number: 13 Explanation and Analysis Throughout the book, Junior attempts to dispel what he sees as pervasive myths about being poor. He also feels like his identity is divided between Reardan and the reservation, particularly because the white teachers call him by his given name, Arnold, instead of Junior. Junior is close to his grandmother, and turns to her for advice when he believes Roger is going to attack him.
On the reservation, Junior feels that Mary is competing with him because he managed to get off it. This is apparent in Junior's community; people don't seem to have realistic ideas about how to get out of poverty, and not many young people are being steered towards achievable goals that might better their lives. Chapter 14 – Thanksgiving. Metaphorically, figuring out his own name who he is, what his goals are, the kind of man he will become is the goal of Junior s decision to go to school in Reardan, and one of the driving forces in this coming-of-age novel.
Note: this book guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by the publisher or author, and we always encourage you to purchase and read the full book. Chapter 24 - Valentine Heart. James Luna's multimedia performances are largely rooted in his culture and daily experience as a Pooyukitchchum (Luiseño) Indian living on La Jolla reservation north of San Diego, in Southern…. Junior looks up to Mary and believes that she is smart and capable enough to do something important with her life. To export the items, click on the button corresponding with the preferred download format. Rowdy didn't comfort Junior or tell him it would be okay; he gave him a tough-love response that acknowledged that Junior leaving wouldn't accomplish anything and nobody would notice so it made sense for him to just stay where he was. He thinks his grandmother's greatest gift was her tolerance, an "old-time Indian spirit" of forgiving... (full context). Chapter 23 – Wake... feeling guilty for years about keeping it. When Mrs. Jeremy makes a snide comment about Junior s frequent absences many of which have been due to funerals and wakes Gordy leads the class in a demonstration of defiance against her. Her belief in tolerance, love, and forgiveness is presented as her greatest gift and a direct contrast to racist hatred; according to Junior, tolerance is a trait that Indians lost as a result of oppression by whites. Dodge and his classmates, petrified wood is formed when a piece of wood is buried under dirt and minerals kind of melt the wood and the glue that holds the wood together.
What do you do when the world has declared nuclear war on you? The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance. Rowdy and Junior go to a powwow in Spokane, Washington. Later, Junior s grandmother, in 2017 LitCharts LLC v. 006 Page 5. her dying words, asks her family to forgive the drunk driver who killed her. Gordy uses the language of travel to talk about life, saying books and comics can help to navigate the river of the world. There's a sense throughout the book that Junior feels that the world is sending him the message that he doesn't have a future to look forward to as he grows up, and Junior is rebelling by having hope and making radically different choices than his community to see if they result in a different outcome. He says that his cartoons could get him off the rez by making him famous, but it's clear that they also save him in more everyday ways by giving him an outlet for his emotions and a source of hope.
Book Description Audio Book (CD). Rowdy gets into an accident and embarrasses himself. Later, Rowdy sneaks into the triplets' camp at night and cuts off their long braids, emasculating them for hurting Junior earlier. He received a copy of the book as a gift from his father when he was 15, and now considers it one of the reasons he began to write. ) Brand New, This is an audio book. Junior's first game is at Wellpinit where everyone turns their backs to him when he walks into the gym. Chapter 2 - Why Chicken Means So Much to Me. Because of Mr. P s advice, Junior decides to transfer to the high school in Reardan, a wealthy white farm town twenty-two miles away. Earl Penelope s father, a racist who warns Junior that he will disown Penelope if Junior gets her pregnant. It s when he s playing basketball that Junior hears and believes the words You can do it this is one place where all his hopes and dreams really are within his reach.
WHITE I don t know if hope is white, Junior states, thinking about the hopefulness of the white students in Reardan. So you might as well gut it out. She is very happy there until she dies in an accidental fire started while she was drunk. FallsApart: Sherman Alexie official website. For Junior, to be Indian and to live on the reservation means dealing not only with overt racism going to a dentist who believes Indians only need half as much novocaine as white people do, or facing racist insults from his white classmates in Reardan but also with the inherited disadvantages and forms of structural oppression that have held his community back for generations.
Dodge deeply resents it when Junior corrects his statement about petrified wood, but thanks Gordy for saying the same thing. At the beginning of the novel, Junior sees his cartoons, and his skill as an artist, as his one chance of leaving the reservation: tiny little lifeboats in a world of broken dams and floods. Not all confessions deserve to be met with forgiveness, however: at Junior s grandmother s funeral, a white billionaire named Ted makes a confession that the Indians meet with ridicule. The combination makes it hard to imagine and work towards a better life. All of these elements contribute to what Junior portrays, and his teacher Mr. P. describes, as a culture of depression, defeat, and hopelessness on the reservation, and they are what Junior tries to escape when he leaves for Reardan. Portraits of Children of Alcoholics: Stories that Add Hope to Hope.