The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2007

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-15

Chapters 16-18

Chapters 19-21

Chapters 22-24

Chapters 25-27

Chapters 28-30

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

Basketball, Competition, and Winning

Basketball plays a central role in Junior’s development into a more mature, developed teenager. Basketball is much more than a simple game, as Junior explains: “it was not just a game. Every game is important. Every game is serious” (148). The basketball court is the literal arena where Rowdy and Junior work out the problems in their friendship. While Rowdy is regarded as the great basketball player on the reservation, Junior doesn’t develop basketball skills until he joins the Reardan team. Their meetups on the court are laden with subtext, as both want to beat the other to prove the legitimacy of their life choices and allegiance to their respective “tribes.” The basketball team at Reardan also provides Junior with much need community and friendship, as well as encourages him to think beyond Reardan to college. The basketball team becomes its own “tribe,” as well as a place where Junior finds joy: he and Rowdy come to an eventual understanding on the basketball court, and that they don’t keep score signals that they have found peace in their friendship.

Basketball also helps Junior understand the world more deeply. From Coach, he learns a Vince Lombardi quotation that teaches him the importance of being committed. Reardan’s final defeat of Wellpinit triggers Junior’s epiphany about the difference between Wellpinit players and Reardan players, and how the white players are in a much more socially advantageous position than the Indian players.

Alcoholism

Alcoholism is pervasive in the book, just as it is pervasive on the reservation. Among the people in Junior’s life, many are alcoholics or “drunks:” his father, his father’s best friend Eugene, Rowdy’s father (Junior also describes his mother as an “ex-drunk”). There is a range of alcoholic behavior represented as well: Eugene and his father sing and dance when they’re drunk, while Rowdy’s father beats him. Junior feels lucky that his father would never hurt him, but his compassion for his father’s alcoholism is tempered by his promise to his mother that he’ll never drink: He loves and understands his father, but he wants desperately to break the cycle of alcoholism in his family, as he has seen its devastating effects.

Alcoholism on the Indian reservation can is a symptom of generations’ worth of inherited historical, cultural, and familial trauma. Alcoholism serves to perpetuate Indians’ poverty and disenfranchisement as well as the literal killing of Indians: all three of the deaths in the book are alcohol-related, and all three are surprising and senseless. Junior predicts that future deaths on the reservation will be related to alcohol as well, and he views this as the biggest threat to his fellow Indians’ survival: “I cried because so many of my fellow tribal members were slowly killing themselves and I wanted them to live. I wanted them to get strong and get sober and get the hell off the rez” (216).

Junior’s Cartoons

Junior’s cartoons appear throughout the course of the book to deepen the reader’s understanding of Junior’s identity. Junior’s cartoons tend to appear in three different styles, each style demonstrating a different aspect of Junior’s artistic identity. One style of cartoons is hastily scribbled, seeming more like doodles rather than fully developed cartoons, as with “the Shroud of Kentucky Fried Chicken” (8). Another style is more fully developed, appearing in comic style panels or with witty captions, as with “How to Pretend You’re Not Poor” (120). Yet a third style is more interested in verisimilitude, or appearing “real,” such as the portrait of Penelope in her father’s old hat (113). The styles reflect Junior’s artistic range, and like Junior himself and the book, defy neat categorization. Much as there is variation in Junior’s written voice, there tends to be variation in his artistic voice as well, ranging from silly to satirical to more intimate portraits of his friends.