Junior in The Absolutely True Story of the Part-Time Indian is faced with many challenges throughout the novel. He is a very awkward young man who has fought and fought his whole life on the "rez" just to survive. That is my initial response to Junior, he is a fighter. Since the day he was born he has fought medical problems including: "water on the brain" (1). Junior must contend with many bullies all over the "rez" trying to beat him up, but still he has such a positive outlook on life. I feel the way he copes with these issues is through his humor, and determination to be better than all those people who had wronged him.
No battle Junior faces is easy, whether it is life on the "rez," attending school in Reardan, or the losses he encounters in his family. No matter how bad things seem to go for Junior, he always finds a way to fight through them. He fights life on the "rez" by leaving, he knows that he is never going to do anything more than "learning how to give up" (42). At Reardan he is the only Indian in a school full of white students. He fights his way to happiness at the school by knocking Roger (the biggest person in the school) "on his ass" (65). To cope with the loss of his grandma and sister, he makes a list of his joys in life to help himself get over these losses. This is an extremely difficult time for Junior, but he fights through it and is a success at his first year at Rearden. These examples shown in the novel prove that the theme of "fighting" can be used in many different ways (not just physically) as an inspiration to strive through the difficult things that happen in life.
True, Cole. I wonder, though, whether Junior's humor and determination are to be better than those who cause him difficulty, or whether Junior's humor and determination are, simply, to be better. Your thoughts?
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