Arnold Spirit in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a constant victim of his race. Born on the Spokane Indian Reservation, he lives a life of poverty and mediocrity. Arnold is intelligent and excels at his reservation school, but that is not all that he is capable of. He goes against the underachieving stereotype of his people and leaves the reservation to seek a better education. This impacts not only him but his community, seeing as he’s one of few to ever leave the reservation, hopefully setting a positive influence for younger Indians. This also causes a change in the views of the students at Reardan, the predominantly white school he transfers to.
At first, the students there see him only as an outsider, an Indian. Someone unlike them and someone to be treated as lesser than. And because Arnold is treated as less, he believes he was less. He showed this when he thought, “Reardan was the opposite of the rez. It was the opposite of my family. It was the opposite of me. I didn’t deserve to be there. I knew it; all of those kids knew it. Indians don’t deserve shit” (56). However, this is in the beginning of Arnold’s life at Reardan. He takes a while to find his place, but when he does, he realizes that he does deserve to be there and that Indians do deserve better chances. Arnold is not the only one who came to a realization about his race. Penelope, Roger, and most everyone at Reardan realize that race is not as big of a dividing factor as they once believed it was. Arnold is a star on their basketball team, a good friend, and ultimately a good addition to both of the communities he is a part of.
My race Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian post, in particular, stood out to me because I felt that it was not only important but well written. I also enjoyed the book and writing the posts so it was overall a good thing for me. The personal narrative was also a hit for me. I thought that it was fairly exciting and well written for my first essay of the year. My research paper on Queen Mary of Scots was my final and major hit. I might not have gotten an incredibly high grade but I felt that I knew so much about Mary of Scots that I could have written a variety of things on her, making the actual paper easier.
My main miss was likely my Lord of the Flies literary analysis. It's not that I didn't try my hardest, but more that I struggled a bit with keeping a central point and wrapping it all up in the end. Writing a poem for a blog post wasn't exactly hard for me, and it wasn't that I didn't do well, I just didn't really enjoy it. I don't love poetry as a whole and so writing it was not something that I enjoyed. Finally, analyzing a poem was my least favorite small piece of writing. Finding a song that I thought used poetry techniques was tedious and my analysis was all up to my opinion, with no real facts, so I did not enjoy it at all.
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