Lissette
Franco
Mr.
deWit
Hope against the System
Many people claim that everything in
life happens for a reason; it’s up to us to figure out whether we want to
accept our life’s path or change it. In Sherman Alexie’s novel, The Absolutely
True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, a young boy named Junior goes through
obstacles to find his true identity and fight society’s expectation as Native
American. With the support of his family and his inspirational teachers, he
left his reservation to achieve goals that only some Natives Americans can
dream of achieving. Graduating from high school and going to college was
difficult for people who lived in the reservations; they couldn’t financially
support each other nor give them the resources to find financial help. Since it
was a poor community, all the reservation people were just expected to work and
pay the bills. Without the support of Junior’s parents and hope that his
teachers has given him that things will get better, he would have submerged in
the system that has been created for that community.
Junior
wasn’t an ordinary child, he was bullied as a young boy and never thought that
things were going to get better for himself. With personal experience, I was
bullied as a young child like himself and found no hope that things were going
to get better. I lived in a poor community were all was expected was to go to
school and at the age of eighteen, start working. My teacher once told me that
the only way I will succeed in life is if I leave this city. Junior was told
the same by his white math teacher. When all hope nearly gone Mr. P gave a pep
talk to junior advising him the all the lives he has seen go to waste and all
the hope that was destroyed because of how the system worked in these poor
communities. “‘All these kids have given up’ he said. ‘All your friends. All
the bullies. And their mothers and fathers have given up, too… We’re all
defeated’” (42). Mr. P knew Junior was special and is capable of great things
that can change people perspective on that community’s capability; the only way
junior’s intelligence was going to be seen is by leaving the reservation,
before the people around him fill his mind with low expectations and only want
to achieve insignificant goals. “‘If you stay on this rez,’ Mr. P said,
‘they’re going to kill you… You can’t fight us forever.’… ‘You’re going to find
more and more hope the father and father you walk away from this sad, sad, sad
reservation’” (43). As described in the
book, not many people in the reservations make it out of the region or state.
It relates a lot to the lives of working lower class families here in the
United States; many lower class people live in a survival environment where
they hardly make enough money to support their family or get financial help
since low full time pay won’t be enough to pay bills. This proves to the
readers that to make it out and become successful, you are going to need to
leave your reservations and give yourself the confidence that you will do
something greater than expected.
Lower class civilians have a bigger
disadvantages than other classes in the system. People in the reservation are struggling
to bring enough money to support the family or themselves for the rest of the
month so they can get by and do this again the next month. “It sucks to be
poor, and it sucks to feel that somehow you deserve to be poor. You start
believing that you’re poor because you’re stupid and ugly. And then you start
believing then you start believing that you’re stupid and ugly because you’re
Indian. And because you’re Indian your start believing that you’re destined to
be poor” (13). Society has placed this
theory in their head, this gives them the disadvantage and loss of hope that
they will be greater and powerful like other social classes. Junior fights
against the stereotypes, insults, and put downs; giving him strength to stand
up and make a difference and help him and his people to get that that theory
out of their heads and live up to what you true dream/ goal is before you are
submerged by the obstacles life throws at you. “‘I have to prove that I am
stronger than everybody else. I have to prove that I will never give up. I will
never quit playing hard… I’m never going to quit living life this hard you
know? I’m never going to surrender to anybody’” (186). By proving to the world
that he will make it out of school and become something great is a goal that
can be achieved; Junior states that no one will bring him down even at his
weakest points. After losing many loved ones within months, many expected him
to surrender and come back to the rez, like nothing has happened, but with the
will power and support from his family, this has come to prove that nothing
will make him give up and he will fight against anyone who will try to take him
down.
The sad truth about being poor is that it’s
harder to be noticed in the real world; it will take you a longer time period
achieving your goal than other people who have the benefits of getting the
sources on how to reach your dream career, etc. “Poverty doesn’t give you strength
or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be
poor” (13). In reality, being poor doesn’t make life a great experiment on how
far you can make it, it made for poor people
to stay in the bottom class and not get back up because it is believed that
poor people won’t be any greater than minimum wage workers. Junior’s sister,
Mary, left the reservation with her husband to make life better than what it
was seemed in that region. “It was courageous of her to leave the basement and
move to Montana. She went searching for her dreams, and she didn’t find them,
but she made the attempt. And I was making an attempt too” (216). Junior influenced
his older sister that there is more to it in life than be in the reservations
and not do anything that was productive in life. Inspiring his sister without
him knowing, made him push himself to be something greater than just any Native
American; no one was going to stop him from dreaming. This proves to the
readers that after hard work and motivation, no one will be able to stop you
from reaching that ambition of becoming who you want to be.
With that said, without dire,
motivation, support and hope, junior wouldn’t have made it so far in life. He would
have submerged into society’s stereotypes and left him working in a low income
job to suffer and live forever in reservations.
