Chelsea Chan - Part Time Indian

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Clever Alexie 

When I turn the pages of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, I appreciate his cleverness. His novel reveals a deep wound in history between Indians and Whites, and its lasting effect of which Arnold Spirit's life illustrates. There are many angles Alexie achieves through Arnold's thoughts and sayings, even drawings all of which proves this book noble.  
My favorite phrase in the book is," I wish I could draw a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or a fist full of twenty-dollar bills, and perform some magic trick and make it real." This literally told me how humble Arnold was. He visualizes the most basic food that is simple to put together alongside a fist full of money. It illustrated he was humble to just want something to eat, nothing extravagant or out of his reach because he knows that this is the life given to him. Although wishing for the simplest food he also wanted money, and that represented the life line to at least float financially above water. Float just enough to enjoy a regular pb&j.  
I loved the method of drawings from the character because it personalized Arnold and made him even more real to the reader. The drawing that spoke volume to me is on page 56. It is an Indian mascot specifically, "Reardan's Inspiring Mascot." It screamed white privilege in one sketch.  A school with good education, full of white people, and a distaste for Native Americans, is able to proudly demonstrate team spirit and support for a mascot that is a Native American--without any backlash. I just think that is clever of Alexie because he displays a huge example of how unaware people are with the entirety of Indians. 

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 6, 2017 at 5:44 PM

    I agree with you on the mascot -- so ironic. I remember there being a huge thing to happen with an NFL team not too long ago, and the call for their name AND mascot be changed, because it was racist and carried a serious negative connotation. I looked it up and found this link -- it's actually pretty informational. Check it out!
    http://www.ncai.org/proudtobe

    ReplyDelete

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