“You are a citizen, and citizenship carries responsibilities.”
~Paul Collier
The weight of the world is on my shoulders. School is incredibly stressful and on top of that, I am playing four sports currently. The way my mom puts it, you only have twenty four hours in a day and I have thirty hours worth of things that I need to do. I arrive at school everyday with bags drooping under my eyes. And somehow, I manage to get through the day. During my day, I am challenged with being a good citizen, and I am also challenged with being a responsible teenager and it’s up to me to make the right decisions.
A poverty-stricken boy fights hardships for an education
“Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.” ~Robert H. Schuller
I didn’t exactly expect to write a wordy essay about The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, the book I finished reading recently, but I did expect to write something absurdly time-gobbling. At least the book was somewhat short. In all honesty, Diary did show me that poverty and hope can shape a teenage boy into someone who takes every opportunity he can to pull himself towards his dream, leaving poverty, being a famous, skilled cartoonist, and saving his family while telling it all with sarcastic honesty. Junior’s story is inspirational and heartbreaking, and made me see how hope in the cracks of life can have a life-changing effect.
A literary reflection on the life of Arnold Spirit
Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.
~Arnold Spirit
Hope is as rare as a pegasus in the mind of Arnold Spirit. Even so, it is the only thing in his life that stands to combat the unforgiving poverty that controls him. At this point hope is the only thing left that can help him to escape from the clutches of poverty that controls himself as well as his reservation.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” | – Winston Churchill
Arnold Spirit’s life has been a climb harder than Mount Everest. Beginning with poverty and ending with looking different from everybody else, with numerous family deaths, beatings and insults somewhere in between, Arnold, who goes by Junior, has had a miserably, awesome, yet terrible life. Along with the poverty and the search for identity, is the sarcasm, the thing that makes Junior a teenager, the thing that makes him human, the thing that allows him to persevere. Junior plays the best round he can with the cards he’s been dealt.
“There are certain life lessons that you can only learn in the struggle.” ― Idowu Koyenikan
In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Junior is forced to face racism everyday; when all seems lost, he perseveres through the tough times, Junior doesn’t let this challenge faze him. Reading this book allowed me to look into the world of Junior, a slightly different Native American kid living on a reservation with his family. The combination of the book’s compelling story, easiness to read, and well thought out plot helped me reflect on the differences between my community here in the town of Concord, and his on the Reservation.
Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.
All life demands struggle. ~Napoleon Hill
Living in a poor town on a Washington State reservation, a kid seeks to find hope. This boy’s name is Junior. However, nothing can ever be easy. Junior faces countless challenges and adversity; moreover, he needs to find hope if he is to be able to overcome this struggle. I was similar in this way, as I needed to look at the bright side and push through annotating the book. Struggle, while a piercing blade poised to penetrate your heart, is dulled by the rigid stone of hope.
“Never lose hope. Storms make people stronger and never last forever.”
~Roy T. Bennett
Nothing great in life comes without adversity. For me, this meant being able to dive into new experiences. When I was all alone; the new boy at school, I had to push past the fear and overcome the adversity. It was my first day at a new school. I was starting the eighth grade, and didn’t know what to expect. All the other kids already knew each other from previous years, but I was a new boy. I had to leave all of my friends from my old school behind, and start a new chapter of my life.
“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” ~Aristotle
With many important things on my mind, reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, wasn’t at the top of my list. The book started slowly and I quickly wanted to stop reading the book and focus on my secondary school essays; however, as I continued reading the book, I learned many key takeaways from this book. Even though this book was a struggle for me to read, I locked in and finished the reading—a reading that explores the effects of poverty and difference in profound ways on a sarcastic, lively boy named Junior, growing up on a Native American reservation, and taught me to accept academic challenges in a more complete way..
Challenge is a plague to us all. The amount of times that I’ve done something without any form of adversity is slim to none. Whether I’m in the classroom, running in cross country or even just playing games by myself, there are hardships embedded within all of my actions. A reward will not be awarded until a challenge is overcome.
