Absolutely True Diary Of Part Time Indian Analysis

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What could a Spokane Indian boy and a vampire-human hybrid possibly have in common? Well, more than one would imagine. Arnold Spirit Junior, in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, struggles with unimaginable grief, bullying, and an inability to fit in, much like Vladimir Tod does in The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod. Junior loses his grandmother, friend, and sister all in a short period of time (Alexie). Vlad, at the age of eight, witnesses the death of both his parents (Brewer). Junior is constantly victimized for his physical differences, as well as his intellectual ones, while Vlad is pushed around by his peers, namely Bill and Tom, for no apparent reason. The similarity between both of these boys that plays the most integral role in both of their stories is being stuck “in-between”: Junior is shunned by his tribe for wanting to go to school with whites, who also shun him for being Spokane, and Vlad must hide his vampirism from humans, while being ostracized from Elysia, the vampire community, for his half-human blood (Brewer). In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod, both Alexie and Brewer use “in-between” teenage boys to illustrate the negative impact prejudice has on someone seeking acceptance. Junior lives on a Spokane Indian reservation. He …show more content…
Both Junior and Vlad face their oppressors with perseverance and determination. They do what they can to show they are not some pariah, some freak, despite their efforts being less than fruitful. Their plight could easily be resolved if both sides in each situation attempted to understand each other, throw out all of their preconceived notions, and learn to connect to each other, through an in-between