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.
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