Student Question
How do the obstacles at the beginning of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian compare to those at the end?
Quick answer:
At the start, Junior's obstacles involve escaping poverty and seeking better education, which he addresses by attending Reardan High School. There, he faces acceptance challenges, but overcomes them through friendship and basketball. By the novel's end, Junior confronts enduring issues like alcoholism and oppression within his tribe, realizing these are lifelong battles. Despite feeling like a traitor for leaving the reservation, Junior understands his broader identity and affiliations beyond his tribe.
In Sherman Alexie's The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,
the first obstaclesprotagonist Junior faces are
somewhat temporary as they involve fulfilling one's desires
and acceptance. In contrast, the obstacles Junior faces by the
end of the novel are ones he will have to deal with his whole
life; however, through undertaking attending Reardan, he certainly
gained a great deal of bravery needed to help him face these obstacles.
In the beginning of the novel, Junior is fed up with
impoverished life on the reservation. What disgusts him the most is
lack of educational opportunities . He realizes just how much his school on the reservation lacks when he sees that his geometry book used to belong to his mother and is, therefore, 30 years older than he is. Junior recognizes that life off the reservation can provide one with far more opportunities to...
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advance in life than the opportunities the Indians on the reservation have, which are no opportunities at all. With the encouragement of his geometry teacher Mr. P, Junior decides he wants to start attending high school at the richer white kids' school 22 miles from the reservation. It can be said that Junior overcomes his obstacle of lack of education bypursuing education on his own. However, attending Reardan
brings new obstacles.
At Reardan, Junior must overcome the obstacle of acceptance,
which he achieves by standing up to the campus alpha male, Roger, and earning
his respect; making friends with the beautiful Penelope through their mutual
loneliness, aspirations, and care for those disadvantaged; making study friends
with the smartest kid in school, who is also a social outcast, Gordy; and
making the school's basketball team.
However, the above obstacles were relatively easy to overcome in comparison to
the obstacles Junior will face his whole life that become
clear by the end of the book. The greatest obstacle concerns Junior's awareness
that the most significant factor keeping the people of his tribe from advancing
out of poverty is alcoholism, and alcoholism is a direct
result of being oppressed by the white people. These two
problems will always remain with Junior, and he will always see the effects of
these two problems. One of the most heartbreaking effects of alcoholism and
oppression is death, such as the death of Junior's father's best friend Eugene
and of Junior's older sister. As Junior phrases it in chapter 28, Junior cried
for the death of his sister and for his whole tribe because he "knew five or
ten or fifteen more Spokanes would die during the next year, and that most of
them would die because of booze."
However, Junior has done the best thing he can to cope with his situation--he
has left the reservation. Though he can't help feeling like a traitor for
leaving, by the end of the novel, he knows leaving is the right thing to do
since he doesn't just belong to the tribe of the Spokanes, he belongs to the
"tribe of American immigrants"; to the "tribe of basketball players"; to the
"tribe of cartoonists"; to the "tribe of teenage boys"; and to so many other
tribes (ch. 28).