Quarter One Choice Book Report

           I read the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.  The main character is Arnold. He lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington state.    He is a poor, brown-haired, wimpy 9th grader with glasses. He loves drawing cartoons. He is brave because he isn't scared to switch to a school outside of the reservation.  He also punches the biggest jock in school.  He is not respected by many people, because when he is on the reservation, they hate him for being a traitor, and when he is at school, people are racist to him. He is smart, but he doesn't really think he is.  He is in all honors classes, and teaches some of the teachers things that they didn't know.  His best friends are Rowdy, a tough kid that can beat up anybody, Penelope, The prettiest, most popular girl in school, and Gordy, the school nerd.  He is a great shooter, but he can’t play defense all that well. On the first day of the season, he plays against Wellpinit High School, Arnold’s old school. His coach tells him that he doesn’t have to play, but he wants to anyway. As soon as he gets the ball, he is hit in the head with a quarter and is taken off the court.  Later in the game, he goes back in and is fouled hard by his old friend, Rowdy.  He is hurt and can't play anymore.  Their team would lose the game because Rowdy scored 40 points.  Arnold is surrounded with death.  During the book a lot of Arnold's friends and family die. His dad's friend is shot in a bar fight.  His dog dies of sickness.  His grandma is killed by a drunk driver.  His sister dies in a mobile home fire.  He has been to more than 300 funerals in his life. Through all this death, Arnold still manages to sustain a good mood.  At the beginning of the book,. Arnold depends on Rowdy for protection. When Rowdy leaves him, Arnold starts to get more independent. When Arnold first arrives at his new school in Reardan, people call him racist names. The most popular boy, Roger takes it a bit too far one day, and Arnold punches him in the stomach. This is surprising, since Arnold’s all time fist fight record is five wins and one hundred and twelve losses. Roger is amazed. He decides that Arnold is cool and stops teasing him.  In conclusion, Arnold isn’t a perfect boy, nor is he all that close to perfection, but he does the best with the life he has been given.

       This book is written in first person view.  Arnold is the "I" because he is the main character.  This book is very emotional at times, and feeling like you're reading his diary makes it even more emotional.  In the parts of the book when his family and friends died, it makes you feel different, because you get to hear how Arnold is feeling.  For example, at the beginning of the book, when his dog, Oscar, died, Arnold writes in his diary, "After Oscar died, I felt like crawling into a hole and disappearing forever."  He also writes "the surgery Oscar needed would cost hundreds of dollars, and a bullet cost two cents.  Anybody can afford a bullet."  The first person view is also important because you can tell from his writing how he is feeling on different days.  Arnold jokes about serious things in his diary to make the world a more livable place for him.  This happens again when he lists the reasons why he misses school so much in cartoon panel form. " 1. Wakes and funerals  2. Couldn't find a ride.  3.  No money in the house.  4.  Mom wanted me to stay home because she was scared  5.  Mom and I had to go search for my father so we could bring him home and keep him safe."  Each of these are accompanied by sadly comical pictures.  He does this again with his ingenious ""Are you Poor?" Possible responses:" and at other times during the book as well.  Another reason this story is from Arnold's point of view is the way Arnold describes the people in his life.  He has an interesting way of describing people. He draws them their own sort of diagram, which he embellishes (as he does with everything) with his comicality.  He describes his teacher, Mr. Potter, as "Almost 4 feet tall, weighing 50 pounds (but only when he is carrying his 15 pound briefcase),  and being bald and having dandruff."  The first person view is also exciting when Arnold figures out that everybody in the world around him has giant flaws.  This drives him to throw a thirty-year-old geometry textbook at Mr. Potter.  As the book goes on, Arnold's life gets harder and harder to make into one enormous comic strip, until he starts to become friends with Rowdy again.  The first person point of view is a good choice for this story.

In conclusion, this story is about a boy who goes against everything that his reservation knows, in order to save his life from the clutches of regularity that his tribe knows so well.  I recommend this book to anybody who wants to ride a topsy-turvy roller coaster ride of emotions that Arnold knows as his life.