Sherman Alexie’s book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a narration about a 14-year-old Arnold Spirit Jr., called Junior in his family and community. The subject of the book is interesting and edifying because it focuses on the coming-of-age story and the feeling of belonging and community. The sense of belonging is one of the central and most important subjects in the book. To express this theme, the author uses two different settings, relationships with community members, and identity conflict in the novel.
Alexie sets the story in two contrasting locations, creating a gap between two racial groups to emphasize the sense of belonging. The first location is Wellpinit, the home of “the poor-ass Spokane Indian Reservation” where the protagonist resides with his family (Alexie 12). Here, all people call him Junior, which symbolizes the boy’s close connection to the tribe and his household. Spokane is a poor and rough place, where Junior is often bullied and humiliated. He says, “poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. [It] only teaches you how to be poor” (Alexie 18). For this reason, Junior is trying to escape from the reservation, transferring to the high school in a mostly-white town Reardan, in which the kids are “the smartest and most athletic kids anywhere” (Alexie 38). In this place, Junior is known as Arnold, which means that his connections to the local people are not as close as in Spokane. These diverse settings help comprehend a sense of belonging and community better.
The author uses direct and indirect characterization and Junior’s relationships with his tribe members to strengthen the sense of identity and belonging. At the beginning of the novel, Junior is described as a person with a sense of humor and an ability to self-criticize. He narrates, “my head was so big that little Indian skulls orbited around it” (Alexie 9). The boy understands and accepts all his physical defects and even draws cartoons of himself and other people. These cartoons help the readers better comprehend the narrator’s place in his native community: he is an outcast, but he is still a part of his tribe. The relationships with Reardan students, however, demonstrate that Junior is not a part of their tribe: “Most of the white boys ignored me” (Alexie 50). The word ‘white’ accentuates the character’s difference, reminding the readers that he was Indian even though he strived to live like white people. These and other examples of characterization express the theme of belonging and community.
Moreover, the author uses the protagonist’s identity conflict to demonstrate the importance of family and community. Junior is living between two cultures and cannot choose which of them is closer to him. The moment when he beats his best friend Rowdy during the final game and celebrates his new team’s victory is the climax of the story where Junior reveals his split identity. He realizes that he is a part of Goliath, but he is “ashamed that [he] wanted so badly to take revenge on” Wellpinit team (Alexie 138). This inner conflict makes Junior understand that he belongs to different tribes, and he has to learn to find his place in each of them: “I might be a lonely Indian boy, but I was not alone in my loneliness” (Alexie 150). Millions of people who moved from their land in search of better life experienced the same struggle, but the sense of community had never left them. Finally, Junior feels that he belongs to many tribes.
Having analyzed the book, one can conclude that people may have to leave their birthplaces and try something new to comprehend that their happiness does not depend on their tribe. Junior dreamed that he would have a better life if he attended Reardan school, but the local students ignored him because of his race. The story teaches that a person should try to develop their best qualities and skills and live a worthy life in any place, irrespective of their origin and culture.
Work Cited
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Adobe Digital Editions, 2007.