Essay about ‘The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian’

“Rowdy and I played one-on-one for hours. We played until dark. We played until the streetlights lit up the court. We played until the bats swooped down at our heads. We played until the moon was huge and golden and perfect in the dark sky.

We didn't keep score” (Alexie, page 230). In the graphic novel, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, the author, “Sherman Alexie”, writes about a young Spokane Indian, named Junior. In this novel, you read about Junior’s childhood on a reservation and his struggles during that time. The intent of this analysis is to show how the race/cultural, gender, and class/economic lenses helped the reader gain a better understanding of the beliefs and feelings of the characters throughout this novel.

The focus of this paragraph is to show how race/cultural lenses help the reader interpret the beliefs and feelings of the main character, Junior. Right at the beginning of the story, Junior said: “And what’s more, our white dentist believed that Indians only felt half as much pain as white people did, so he only gave us half the novocaine” (Alexie, page 22). The reader can use this quote to understand that Junior believed that most white people are racist and that he most likely felt discriminated against when the dentist pulled 10 of his teeth after only giving him half the amount of novocaine he should have received. Another quote that helped the reader was “ ”Who has the most hope?” “White people,” my parents said at the same time. That’s exactly what I thought they were going to say” (Alexie, page 45). This quote shows the reader how Junior believed that his parents’ hopes and dreams were suppressed by the white people so greatly, that they lost all of them. The reader can infer that this made Junior feel sad because his parents said exactly what he thought they were going to say. In this paragraph, I told you about how the race/cultural lenses helped the reader interpret Junior’s beliefs and feelings. Although this lens didn’t only affect how the reader saw Junior.

This paragraph will include how the lenses in the first paragraph helped the reader to better understand the beliefs and feelings of the other Indians from the reservation towards Junior. After Junior had decided to go to the all-white school, Reardan Highschool, the other Indians on the reservation turned on Junior and started to call him names and bully him. This happened because they believed that Junior was a traitor and was disloyal to them for leaving the reservation. Because Junior’s fellow tribe members bullied him, the reader could understand that most of the tribe members hate him and his decision to go to Reardan. The reader can also infer that the tribe members felt that Junior made a terrible and completely disloyal choice and that he should return to the reservation. There was another quote that helped show the hate towards Junior from his fellow tribe members: “As I ran onto the court, somebody in the crowd threw a quarter at me. AND IT HIT ME IN THE FRICKING FOREHEAD!” (Alexie, page 145). Again, this was another quote that helps the reader understand how Junior’s fellow tribe members feel about him. It also shows how many of Junior’s tribe members probably want to kill him. These past two paragraphs have both covered how the race/cultural lenses helped the reader better understand the beliefs and feelings of Junior and his tribe members. Although, these are not the only lenses that the reader could use.

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The focus of this paragraph will be to inform you of how the gender lens helped the reader gain comprehension of the beliefs and feelings of Junior’s best friend Rowdy. After Rowdy found out that Junior was switching schools to go to Reardan, he became really angry. “He coughed and turned away from me. I touched his shoulder. Why did I touch his shoulder? I don’t know. I was stupid. Rowdy spun around and shoved me. “Don’t touch me, you retarded fag!” he yelled. My heart broke into fourteen pieces, one for each year that Rowdy and I had been best friends” (Alexie, page 52). Using this quote, the reader can sense that Rowdy obviously felt extremely angry due to his harsh language and yelling toward Junior. The reader can also infer due to how Rowdy felt, that he was angry at Junior’s decision to switch schools and that he believed that Junior is just a “retarded fag” and nothing more. In addition, Rowdy tended to use sexually offensive and demeaning words whenever he became mad and even when he was slightly irritated. Rowdy’s choice of words allows the reader to understand that he has very strong beliefs and that he always feels that he is right. This is true because of the way that Rowdy proves his points in arguments, which is done with strong hate words relating to gender. This section of my paper was all about the effect of the gender lens on the reader’s comprehension of the character’s beliefs and feelings. The next section will include how the same lens affects the reader’s comprehension of another character.

Not only did the gender lens affect how the reader viewed Rowdy, but it also affected how the reader viewed Junior’s grandma or “Grandma Spirit”. In one passage, Junior explains how Grandma Spirit is tolerant. “My grandmother’s greatest gift was tolerance” (Alexie, page 155). Using this information, the reader may conclude that Grandma Spirit believed that it doesn’t matter what your gender is or what you look like, or where you’re from. Also, Grandma Spirit might have felt that everyone deserves a second chance. In one part of the novel, Grandma Spirit asked her family to forgive the drunk driver that hit her and later caused her death. “My father was all quiet and serious with the surgeon, a big and handsome white guy. “Did she say anything before she died?” he asked. “Yes,” the surgeon said. “She said, ‘forgive him’ “ “Forgive him?” my father asked. “I think she was referring to the drunk driver who killed her”. Wow. My grandmother’s last act on earth was a call for forgiveness, love, and tolerance.” (Alexie, page 157). This evidence builds on the last by further proving that the reader could see that Grandma Spirit believed that it doesn't matter what you look like, where you’re from, or what your gender is. This also shows the reader that Grandma Spirit wanted everyone to have a second chance. So far, each paragraph has covered a different character/characters. Two lenses were also discussed: the race/cultural and gender lenses. This analysis will include how one more set of lenses helped the reader.

The last set of lenses that the reader may have used is the class/economic lenses. The main points of this paragraph are to show how the class/economic lenses helped the reader understand the beliefs and feelings of “Billionaire” Ted. Shortly after Granda Spirit passed away, Ted decided to come to her wake to return a stolen pow-wow dress that he believed belonged to Grandma Spirit. “ “I have the outfit here,” Ted said. He opened up his suitcase and pulled out the outfit and held it up. It was fifty pounds, so he struggled with it. Anybody would have struggled with it. “So if any of Grandmother Spirit’s children are here, I’d love to return her outfit to them” “ (Alexie, page 165). Although Ted was going to give them the dress back, If the reader is smart, they will realize that Ted doesn’t actually care and that he is only returning the dress for free because he is a billionaire and can easily afford to lose $1000. This leads to the reader figure out that Ted believed returning the dress would make people like him and maybe bring him some fame. After Ted asks if any of Grandma Spirit’s children are there, Junior’s mom tells Ted that he got it all wrong. “ “There’s nothing to forgive, Ted,” my mother said. “Grandmother Spirit wasn’t a pow-wow dancer.” (Alexie, page 165). After Ted realized that they figured out his lie, he abruptly got in his car and sped away. This excerpt from the novel really showed how Ted was lying the whole time. This helps the reader understand with no doubt that Ted believed that he could lie and that he really thought that returning the dress would make the Indians like him. In the past paragraphs, you have been introduced to 3 different lenses that the reader could use to understand the feelings and beliefs of different characters. Before I close this analysis, I would like to show how the class/economic lenses affected how the reader was able to understand one more character.

This final paragraph’s purpose is to show how the reader perceived the main character Junior, through the class/economic lenses. When Junior and his math class at Wellpinit High School got their Geometry textbooks, he threw his book at his teacher's face and broke his teacher’s nose. The reason he did that, was because of what the book said on the inside: “THIS BOOK BELONGS TO AGNES ADAMS. Okay, now you're probably asking yourself, 'Who is Agnes Adams?' Well, let me tell you. Agnes Adams is my mother. MY MOTHER! And Adams is her maiden name. 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” (Alexie, page 31). The reader can easily figure out that Junior probably felt angry because he had just received a 45-year-old textbook, meaning that his school and the tribe don’t even have enough money to replace the textbooks that his parents used. The reader could infer that Junior believed that he would never accomplish anything if his whole tribe had virtually no money. Another section of the novel that the reader could interpret using the class/economic lens was after the dance when Roger wanted Junior to go to the diner. Junior didn’t want to go because he didn’t have much money. “I had five bucks in my pocket. What could I buy with that? Maybe one plate of pancakes. Maybe. I was doomed” (Alexie, page 123). The reader could use this quote to understand that Junior felt really nervous because he didn’t think he could pay for any food at the diner. The reader can infer that Junior believed that he would be made fun of for not having enough money.

The purpose of my paper was to discuss how the reader was able to use the race/cultural, gender, and class/economic lenses to better interpret the beliefs and feelings of the characters throughout different sections of the novel. Throughout my analysis, I discussed how the 3 main lenses helped the reader to gain a better comprehension of Junior, his tribe members, his best friend Rowdy, his grandma, and Ted. Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a wonderful graphic novel that covers the successes and struggles of Junior and those around him during his childhood.