sherman Alexie essay

Guillermo Perez
English 102  
3/7/2014

                                 All it Takes its One Chance
 From a young age were thought to think big, and it always begins in school with teachers asking as what we want to be when we grow up. Parents and grandparents always telling us to do what they couldn’t do in their time making us feel hopeful of our outcome in the future, showing us that at the end of the day we can make our own path. In Sherman Alexie’s book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Mr. Alexie illustrates a picture to us of an Indian boy named Arnold Spirit, a young boy who from an early age struggled just to stay afloat in an Indian Reservation. Arnold was a smart child he knew that giving up was never an option, he went through life drawing cartoons to deal with aspects of his daily routine, this was a way for this young boy to cope with situations throughout his life by always looking at the bright side in every picture that he drew.
Arnold learns that he might end up like every other Indian in the reservation who been living a very harsh life with no goals or a motive to live, drowing themselves in the habit of alcoholism. All this happens when he was sitting in math class; after he received his math book and took a look at the first page he realized that he had received his mom’s old book. He felt like he was stuck in time, making him realize that his hopes and dreams would end in the reservation, but all this changes. Mr. P who is Arnold’s math teacher tells him, “You Can’t Give up. You won’t give up. You threw that Book in my face because somewhere inside you refuse to give up.” (34) Life always gives us challenges, some difficult some easy but we always have to face them with the same attitude, this is what Arnold did, he did not let being from a reservation affect his life. Most of his life he had been facing challenges and he took being able to get a out of the “rez” as one of them he was hopeful that his life would change once he was out of the reservation. “I mean, they've always known that I'm weird and ambitious, so maybe they expect me to do the weirdest things possible.”(37) Arnold was not the most sociable person and never really talked so he had a very particular way of communicating how he felt and this was through cartoons. Through cartoons he felt a live he knew that anyone one could understand him by seeing one of his cartoons.
       
There is a very famous quote that says “A picture is worth a thousand words”. And this is exactly what Arnold did to express what he wanted to say, through pictures. He wanted to make sure anyone could understand what he was trying to say. For example in page 34 of the book, he shows pole with 4 signs that read on the left side “rez” “Home”, on the right side it reads “hope” “???” standing to the right size while the Reservation stands to the left. What is Arnold trying to say with this picture? Well that’s easy he is saying that by leaving the reservation he is going to have more hope for the outcome of his life but at the same time the reservation is his home is where he grew up and that’s all he knows but leaving the reservation has its benefits it brings hope and a little bit of the unknown which could be anything that he desires to be anything that can help him escape the his reality. “So I draw because I feel like it might be my only real chance to escape the reservation.” (6) Sometimes we hold on to the smallest things believing that it could be our only hope not realizing that we make our own destiny, it could give us the drive to achieve what we really want in life and we just have to be hopeful for a good outcome. Arnold asked Rawdy one more time to go with him to Reardan expecting a different outcome this time he had hope that his friend would change his mind, “Yeah, but I asked you a long time ago. Before everything happened. Before we knew stuff. So im asking you again. Come to Reardan with me.”(183)
       
Sometimes we do not have a clear idea of what is hope. What does it really mean to have hope? Arnold mentions a lot of times that he has hope but what is exactly hope? If we really stop to define hope in Arnolds believes hope it’s a way to escape to move on like Mr. P Said to Arnold, “You fought off those seizures, you fought off all the drunks and drug addicts. You kept your hope. And now, you have to take your hope and go somewhere Sere other people have hope.”(35) Throughout his whole life Arnold has battling off the struggles and people that have been trying to hold him back. When Mr. p went to have the talk with Arnold he wanted to make sure that if Arnold had hope he could do anything, but it would had to be in a place where Arnold could be around people that had hope just like him. “if you stay on this rez,” Mr. P Said, “they are going to kill you. I’m going to kill you we’re all going to kill you. You can’t fight us forever.”(35) Sometimes being in one place could limit what we do in our lives; sometimes knowing what we really want out of our lives could make a very big difference in the way we approach them.

         Sherman Alexie has a clever way of telling us his life story. from being a young Indian boy living in a reservation to going out of town to mix with the white kids, enduring fights, humiliations from his own people and the whites as well, and being able to control his own destiny at the same time is a story that makes it clear that with hope you can do anything just because your surroundings are not the best or because you live in a different part of town or simply for having a different skin color than others, does not mean that you can’t achieve what you put your mind into. Sometimes when we least expect it anyone could change our life completely.

Sherman Alexie essay

Guillermo Perez

English 102     

3/3/2014

 

                                    A picture is worth a thousand words

Ever since we are little we are thought to think big, and it always begins  in school with teachers asking as what we want to be when we grow up, to parents and grandparents always telling us to do what they couldn’t do in their time making us feel hopeful of our outcome in the future. In Sherman Alexie’s book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Mr. Alexie illustrates a picture to us of an Indian boy named Arnold Spirit, a young Indian boy who from an early age struggled just to stay afloat in his Indian Reservation. Arnold was a smart child he knew that giving up was never an option, he went through life drawing cartoons to deal with aspects of his daily routine, that was a way for this young boy to deal  with situations throughout his life always looking at the bright side in every picture that he drew.   

Arnold a young native American boy who learns that he might end up like every other Indian in the reservation after they have given up,  being a drunk.  All this happens when he was sitting in math class; after he received his math book and took a look at the first page he realized that he had received his mom’s old book. It felt like he was stuck in time, he realized that his hopes and dreams would end in the reservation but all this changed. Mr. P who was Arnold’s math teacher told him, “You Can’t Give up. You won’t give up. You threw that Book in my face because somewhere inside you refuse to give up.” (34) Life always gives us challenges, some difficult some easy but we always have to face them with the same attitude, this is what Arnold did, he did not let being from a reservation affect his life. Most of his life he had been facing challenges and he took being able to get a out of the “rez” as one of them he was hopeful that his life would change once he was out of the reservation. “I mean, they've always known that I'm weird and ambitious, so maybe they expect me to do the weirdest things possible.”(37) Arnold was not the most sociable person and never really talked so he had a very particular way of communicating how he felt and this was through cartoons.

           

There is a very famous quote that says “A picture is worth a thousand words”. And this is exactly what Arnold did to express what he wanted to say, through pictures. He wanted to make sure anyone could understand what he was trying to say. For example in page 34 of the book, he shows pole with 4 signs that read on the left side “rez” “Home”, on the right side it reads “hope” “???” standing to the right size while the Reservation stands to the left. What is Arnold trying to say with this picture? Well that’s easy he is saying that by leaving the reservation he is going to have more hope for the outcome of his life but at the same time the reservation is his home is where he grew up and that’s all he knows but leaving the reservation has its benefits it brings hope and a little bit of the unknown which could be anything that he desires to be anything that can help him escape the his reality. “So I draw because I feel like it might be my only real chance to escape the reservation.” (6) Sometimes we hold on to the smallest things believing that it could be our only hope not realizing that we make our own destiny, it could give us the drive to achieve what we really want in life and we just have to be hopeful for a good outcome. Arnold asked Rawdy one more time to go with him to Reardan expecting a different outcome this time he had hope that his friend would change his mind, “Yeah, but I asked you a long time ago. Before everything happened. Before we knew stuff. So im asking you again. Come to Reardan with me.”(183)

           

Sometimes we do not have a clear idea of what is hope. What does it really mean to have hope? Arnold mentions a lot of times that he has hope but what is exactly hope? If we really stop to define hope in Arnolds believes hope it’s a way to escape to move on like Mr. P Said to Arnold, “You fought off those seizures, you fought off all the drunks and drug addicts. You kept your hope. And now, you have to take your hope and go somewhere Sere other people have hope.”(35) Throughout his whole life Arnold has battling off the struggles and people that have been trying to hold him back. When Mr. p went to have the talk with Arnold he wanted to make sure that if Arnold had hope he could do anything, but it would had to be in a place where Arnold could be around people that had hope just like him. “if you stay on this rez,” Mr. P Said, “they are going to kill you. I’m going to kill you we’re all going to kill you. You can’t fight us forever.”(35)  Sometimes being in one place could limit what we do in our lives; sometimes knowing what we really want out of our lives could make a very big difference in the way we approach them.

 

            Sherman Alexie has a clever way of telling us his life story. from being a young Indian boy living in a reservation to going out of town to mix with the white kids, enduring fights, humiliations from his own people and the whites as well, and being able to control his own destiny at the same time is a story that makes it clear that with hope you can do anything just because your surroundings are not the best or because you  live in a different part of town or simply for having a different skin color than others, does not mean that you can’t achieve what you put your mind into. Sometimes when we least expect it anyone could change our life completely.

Sample Essay 2

How interesting the paper is
How understandable the paper is
How convincing the paper is
How well-developed and supported the various topic sentences are
           
              In my opinion the paper that works best is the sample paper 2, “Stories of Survival” it begins by Introducing the author and title of the book that he will be talking about, the writer begins his introduction paragraph by giving a background on some of the main points that the author of the book Sherman Alexie addresses in his Book The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-time Indian. One thing that really caught my eye is that the writer of the essay brought in another book by Sherman Alexie Smoke Signal.
         
              Im not sure if I would call this an interesting paper it does explain what alexie went through in his life all the struggles, humiliation from other race as well as his own. I feel like the writer just took a bunch of sentence from the whole book and tried to connect them just as is not breaking them down and making a clear point. It got boring after the first paragraph with the writer writing short sentences that werent making any sense at all

              The paper is a little hard to understand it jumps from topic to topic too many short sentences that do not connect with each other. I did not see a clear point that the writer was trying to portray throughout the story.
           
              The whole essay has to many points that writer needs to address and break down he/she needs to breakdown the points that he is making and develop them a little more. I feel that the way the the writer began the essay explaining Alexie's life was good but he should of just focused on one part that he was trying to make a point of and developed. He does not have topic sentences that do not connect with what he is saying in the paragraph. Every single paragraph has a different senario that has not been fully examined therefore its not making a clear point or connecting back to the main topic sentence.
           
               The essay as a whole was ok, with the introduction being the best part of the whole essay. The writer has to note down a few main points that he wants to base the essay on and go from there making it a little more clear for a person who has never read the book and giving a clear summary of the book to that person.

How to Convience a young boy to read Sherman Alexie's book.

          Dear nataly read this book called The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Explains the life and the struggles that Sherman Alexie went through as a young boy in a Indian Reservation. In The book Mr. Alexie talks about how he broke a barrier of being a Poor Indian boy and Going to school to do something with his life, how he overcame different struggles or situation that stood in front of his path just by following his dreams and not giving up like many Indian kids that lived in the reservation did.

            The book will keep you entertained from page to page; it could either be from a funny picture in the book of the book, or a something that his best friend Rowdy said. I’m not saying this book is mainly intended to make someone laugh, because it’s not, the main purpose of the book it’s to portrait a picture of someone that never gave up in life, that no matter what obstacle presents in your way, you can always overcome it, it doesn’t matter if you have to walk a long distance to get to school or not having anything to eat, as long as you always concentrate on your dreams and goals you can achieve what you put your mind on.

hw option 1, finish listening to radio show

As I listened to the show of Pacifica Radio “Democracy now” which airs on 94.1 Fm, 9am to 10Pm M-f, I couldn’t help but notice that when president Obama spoke about immigration he only said and as pointed out by Amy Goodman, Host of “Democracy now”, that the president only said one paragraph regarding the Immigration reform.  Now in the radio show they said that he might have been cautious because of the immigration reform proposal that the Republican Party wants to introduce but they also said of how he said that he wants to get the immigration reform done this year but that’s the same thing he has been saying since he came into office. It was also stated how he talked about the meaning of citizenship  and how he spoke a lot of American values but he did not connect that but how we will integrate 11 million of undocumented people that live all across the country.

            I feel that Obama since the beginning of his campaign when he was running for president he knew that there was millions of people hiding under the shadows and he really believes and wants to bring them out but with everything that its going on around the country with the Health care system, Wars, trying to restore the economy he has too much on his plate. The congress not wanting to work with him makes a very difficult job for someone like Obama, I think that he really wants to fix the immigration system but he cannot do it due to the lack of participation by the other parties.