Similarities and Differences on the Reservation and Reardon From the book “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian '' by Sherman Alexie shows many different examples of similarities and differences, Junior has had many different experiences with his time at Reardan and his time at Wellpenit. Junior's freshman year he has moved schools and is in a mostly white environment, which is new for him, because he is from a school full of Indians kids. There are many similarities and differences between Juniors life on the reservation and his life at Reardan. To begin, there are similarities on the reservation and at the white school, Reardan. Junior played basketball at both schools, but he didn't think he was good enough to make varsity at Reardan. “I suppose it had something to do with confidence. I mean I’d always been the lowest Indian on the reservation totem pole - I wasn’t expected to be good so I won’t. But in Reardan, my coach and the other players wanted me to be good. They needed me to be good. They expected me to be good. And so I became good.” (180) Junior did not believe he was good enough to play varsity, but he worked hard and became better for Reardan. Another similarity would have to be Junior friendships on the reservation and at Reardan. Rowdy is …show more content…
In Reardan, they were able to afford new books, but were not able to afford the new books at Wellpenit. “So that means my mother was born an Adams and she was still an Adams when she wrote her name in that book. And she was thirty when she gave birth to me. Yep, so that means I was staring at a geometry book that was at least thirty years older than I was.” (31) Junior explains how he has gotten his mothers book from when she was in school 30 years ago. Another example is that Reardan has very fun school dances when they dress up very nice, while at Wellpenit they don’t have dances. Those are only a few examples of differences shown in this
When he was in Highschool he was an excellent student and an even better football player. He is six-feet-two and very muscular. Darry was super popular in Highschool and had many friends. “He was captain of the football team and he had been voted Boy of the year. But we just didn't have the money for him to go to college, even with the athletic scholarship he won”(Hinton, 16).
Mr. p was one of the biggest inspirations to juniors actions. If it weren't for him Junior would be stuck at the rez forever and most likely become like all the other adults, drunk and angry. When junior began his journey to achieve his goals at Reardan it was very difficult. He was the only “different” kid there. Different meaning he was the only Indian in a school of white kids.
When Junior goes to this school people treat him differently he acts differently he even goes by a different name. He doesn’t want to forget about his heritage and the people he left behind but he feels like this school will get him on a better path for life. He also feels a little bit guilty about leaving his friends and family from the reservation behind and moving on in life. You can see this in a quote from the book "My name is Junior," I said. "And my name is Arnold.
As the novel progresses Junior is keen on going to the school that is separated from his reservation called Reardon High. Even though Junior wants to go to this school so he can achieve a better education, much backlash came from Juniors tribe as it seemed as if he was abandoning his culture. Juniors started at Rearden very worried about what everyone would think of him, and on his first day he punched a white kid in the face for telling an insensitive joke to him. Junior went home feeling confident in what he did but later started to realize that him trying to prove himself to everyone was unnecessary.
There are many differences between these two places and Junior finds a home in both of them. Wellpinit is a reservation that is basically a huge family while Rearden is a small town where everyone has their own small group or family. They couldn’t be
With living on the reservation, opportunities are limited or scarce, being where Junior is, most, if not all, have lost their hope, the hope to succeed or to get
“In the middle of a crazy drunk life, you have to hang on the good and sober moments tightly.” (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie page 216) This is a quote from the book that shows how Junior learns how to appreciate the good moments in life. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie the character Junior faces problems caused by drinking. The book starts off with his family living on the Indian reservation suffering from poverty and death.
If it were not for Junior constantly facing the adversity of being bullied he would not have made the decision to shave the Andrusses hair. This conflict influenced Junior to make actions that are risky but could end up benefiting him in the future. Junior was not the only Indian on the reservation facing adversity. In fact most of the Indians were, and a specific person noticed this and finally came out and said something. Mr. P,
This shows that it is important to stay hopeful and junior manages to break multiple stereotypes that are associated with native Americans. Additionally, Rowdy aids Junior when breaking stereotypes of Native Americans being inferior people. When Reardan is first mentioned Junior says that “Reardan beat us 72-5 and 86-50, our only two losses of the season. “ (Alexie 50). Alexie shows that Junior and Rowdy both have a lack of confidence and believed that Native Americans were much
In Sherman Alexie’s, “The Absolutely Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, Alexie shares the story of a teenage Native American boy named Junior who lives on the rez and desires to have a better education. But for this, he must attend a white school 22 miles from the rez. Despite having various forms of oppression both living on the rez and going to Reardan High School, Alexie shows Junior’s budding future through the use of literary devices and Junior’s
Yep, we had humiliated them. We were dancing around the gym, laughing and screaming and chanting. My teammates mobbed me. They lifted me up on their shoulders and carried me around the gym”( Alexie 156 pdf). Junior was very motivated on the Reardan basketball team which serves as another lesson from the author Sherman Alexie, if you feel lonely and down, try out different extracurricular activities which bring you closer to other
Evan Fonseca Mr. Rodriguez Academic LiteraturePeriod 7 21 April 2023 ARD-Final Essay “But somehow or another, Indians have forgotten that reservations were meant to be death camps. I wept because I was the only one who was brave and crazy enough to leave the rez. I was the only one with enough arrogance,” (Sherman 218). In the fiction novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, the author wrote about the difficulties the protagonist young Indian teenager, Junior, felt as a native american who lived within a Spokane reservation in Washington state and was attending an all white school. It shows his struggles, and how he matured and developed through the losses and setbacks he faced in life.
In his book the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie portrays a teenage boy, Arnold Spirit (junior) living in white man’s world, and he must struggle to overcome racism and stereotypes if he must achieve his dreams. In the book, Junior faces a myriad of misfortunes at his former school in ‘the rez’ (reservation), which occurs as he struggles to escape from racial and stereotypical expectations about Indians. For Junior he must weigh between accepting what is expected of him as an Indian or fight against those forces and proof his peers and teachers wrong. Therefore, from the time Junior is in school at reservation up to the time he decides to attend a neighboring school in Rearden, we see a teenager who is facing tough consequences for attempting to go against the racial stereotypes.
In his double life in Reardan and on the reservation, he feels “like a magician slicing himself in half, with Junior living on the north side of the river and Arnold living on the south,” (p. 60-61) “I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other. It was like being Indian was my job, but it was only part-time.” (p.118) Just as his absolutely true identity includes both Junior and Arnold, the divided extremes he describes often turn out to be hazy. Roger, the Reardan student who greets Junior in the schoolyard with a cruel racist joke, becomes a sympathetic friend and role model; Rowdy is both Junior’s greatest friend and his worst enemy, and hates him because he loves him so abundantly. Things like the basketball game Reardan wins against Wellpinit becomes both a glorious victory and a shameful moral loss for Junior.
On Arnold’s first day of school, he received his mother’s old geometry textbook that was assigned to her when she was in high school. He realized the textbook was 30 years old and the school wasn’t giving him the best education. This news was devastating for him, “My school and