The Absolutely True Diary Of Part Time Indian Analysis

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A Hard Life Being picked on and made fun of isn’t fun, right? Arnold, a teenager who started at the bottom on his lowly reservation has. He escaped with his hope and found himself being one of the most popular people at Reardan, a white, rich school 22 miles from the rez. All this happened in 1 year in the life of Arnold Spirit. In the book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, a boy overcomes his internal problems, and realizes the racial divide outside of the rez. He powers through the difficult switch between Wellpinit and Reardan with the help of friends that he makes along the way. Arnold, a teenager on a small, depressed Indian reservation held on to hope and endured endless loss which shows how finding…show more content…
Hope is hard to find in life. Arnold thinks hope is like a mythical creature nobody has ever seen before, like a unicorn. “I don’t know if hope is white, but I do know that hope for me is like some mythical creature”(51). Nobody on the rez has seen hope so they don’t know what it is, their place where they live is where hope runs away from. All people forget about hope by using alcohol. Secondly, his family is very poor so he almost never gets money or presents for any occasion. “I picked up the other boot and dug inside...I found a wrinkled $5 bill... wow”(151). Usually, Christmas is a hard time for everyone on the rez. They celebrate the great time of year and then instead of spending the money on presents, the parents spend it on alcohol. Arnold’s dad though, saves $5 for him, he earns a lot of respect for his father through this act of kindness As his life at Reardan progresses, Arnold gains the respect and support of his peers.…show more content…
His dog and best friend, Oscar, gets sick so this happens, “So I heard the boom of my father’s rifle when he shot my best friend”(14). Oscar, Arnold’s dog was sick and going to die, problem is that they are too poor to afford a doctor. His dad’s solution is to put him out of his misery and pain by shooting him. This is hard for Arnold because he is 1 of his 2 friends in his life. As the story continues, he loses his grandma to a drunk driver and his dad’s best friend, his uncle, to a drunk shooting. “We’d lost my grandmother and Eugene. How much loss are we supposed to endure?”(171).His grandma was a role model to him, she was everything he wanted to be, calm and non-alcoholic, when he lost her he lost his role model, so he had nobody to look up to. Eugene was like his 2nd father, when his dad was drunk Eugene would help him out if he wasn’t drunk also. At the end of the book, Arnold loses his sister to a fire in her house. “But it’s not too comforting to learn that your sister was TOO FREAKING DRUNK to feel any pain when she BURNED TO DEATH!”(205). She moved to Montana to live with a guy who was good at cards and Arnold blames himself for his sister leaving. She decided to follow her dreams and was trying really hard to chase them when she ended up like every other Indian, dead because she got drunk and did something stupid. Nonetheless, Arnold stayed afloat amidst all the lost
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