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

Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary: “The Black-Eye-of-the-Month Club”

The narrator, Arnold “Junior” Spirit Jr., is 14 years old and lives on an Indian Reservation in Spokane, Washington. He introduces himself by saying he was born with hydrocephaly, or “water on the brain” (1). As a baby, he underwent brain surgery that he was not expected to survive, but he lived with complications. He had 42 teeth, and had the 10 extra pulled in one day. The dentist gave him only half the usual amount of Novocain because the “white dentist believed Indians only felt half as much pain as white people did” (2). As a result of hydrocephaly, Junior is nearsighted and wears thick glasses issued by Indian Health Service. He gets headaches, is extremely skinny with huge hands and feet, and has an enormous skull.

Growing up, Junior also had seizures twice a week, which re-damaged his brain. At the time of writing, he is still susceptible to seizures, but he hasn’t had one in seven years. The brain damage has left him with a stutter and a lisp, which his peers bully him for. He gets beaten up twice a month and so belongs to what he calls the “Black-Eye-of-the-Month Club” (4).

Junior prefers to stay home and draw cartoons of his family, his best friend Rowdy, and others on the reservation. Junior likes drawing “because words are too unpredictable” and “limited,” but “when you draw a picture, everybody can understand it” (5). He draws because “[he] want[s] to talk to the world. And [he] wants the world to pay attention to [him]” (6). He believes becoming an artist is the only way he can become rich and famous and one day leave the reservation.

Chapter 2 Summary: “Why Chicken Means so Much to Me”

Junior is a talented cartoonist, but he explains that will never be as important as having food or money. Sometimes, his family doesn’t have enough money for meals, but then his parents bring home a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Junior says, “a good piece of chicken can make anybody believe in the existence of God” (8).

Junior reevaluates and says hunger isn’t the worst thing about being poor. He tells a story about his dog, Oscar, whom Junior calls his best friend. Oscar gets sick, and when Junior tells his mother they have to take Oscar to the vet, she says he’ll be fine. Junior knows she’s lying because his mother is a bad liar: “We Indians should be better liars, considering how often we’ve been lied to” (10).

Junior’s mom says they don’t have the money for the vet, and Junior offers to get a job, only to realize no such job exists for an Indian boy who lives on a reservation. His Mom and Dad decide, without Junior, to shoot Oscar. Junior’s Dad gets a rifle and begins to cry.

Junior says he can’t blame his parents for their poverty because his parents were denied opportunities growing up: “we reservation Indians don’t get to realize our dreams” (13). Junior imagines his mother would have been a community college teacher, and his father would have been a musician if someone had acknowledged their dreams.

Junior tells Oscar he loves him and runs away, but he still hears the shot. Junior says, “a bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that” (14).

Chapter 3 Summary: “Revenge Is My Middle Name”

After Oscar’s death, Junior is so depressed he wants to disappear, but his best friend, Rowdy, talks him out of it using tough love. Rowdy is “strong and mean as a snake,” and fights everyone and everything (15). Rowdy’s father drinks heavily and beats Rowdy and his mother. Junior’s parents are also “drunks,” but they never hit him. Because Junior’s house is a “safe place,” Rowdy spends most of his time there, like an extra family member. Junior and Rowdy share a birthday, and Rowdy has always protected Junior.

Rowdy convinces Junior to attend a powwow, even though Junior fears he’ll get beaten up. Rowdy promises to protect him, and in the parking lot, Rowdy trips and falls into a minivan. When Junior laughs at him, he throws a bag of garbage at the minivan and then smashes the car with a shovel.

Afraid of getting in trouble for vandalism, Junior runs into the Andruss brothers’ camp. The Andruss brothers, 30-year-old triplets, make fun of Junior, calling him “Hydro Head” and various other names. They beat him up and knee him in the groin. The boys hide near the camp until three in the morning, and Rowdy shaves off the Andruss brothers’ eyebrows and cuts off their braids while they’re sleeping: “about the worst thing you can do to an Indian guy” (22). Rowdy starts a rumor that Makah Indians are responsible.

Junior says Rowdy is sweet because he loves comic books, especially goofy old ones, and they read them together every day. Rowdy is a “big, goofy dreamer” like Junior (23). Junior says Rowdy is more important than his family, and that they are inseparable.

Chapters 1-3 Analysis

The opening chapters introduces the protagonist and first-person narrator, Arnold “Junior” Spirit, an American Spokane Indian who lives on a reservation, or a “rez,” as he calls it. The book takes the form of Junior’s diary, with each chapter representing another entry. Junior’s voice is distinctive for his sense of humor and his candor, as well as the original cartoons he includes that help him make sense of his world. As a writer and an illustrator, junior is a young artist with big dreams who feels, in some ways, lucky to exist at all, given that he was expected to die in infancy from hydrocephaly. Junior is intelligent but also naïve, as he’s never experienced life outside the reservation. Junior struggles to feel like he belongs, and even among his own tribe he is a misfit.

The horrific death of Junior’s beloved dog both illustrates the tone of life on the reservation, as well as foreshadows the many deaths that come later. The episode with Oscar also establishes poverty as an inescapable, extremely painful condition of living on the reservation. Despite the difficulty, Junior has two parents he loves deeply, and even though his parents suffer from alcoholism, he never suffers abuse at their hands. Junior also greatly values his friendship with Rowdy, who acts as a foil for Junior throughout the course of the novel. While Junior cries often and openly expresses his feelings, Rowdy avoids talking about emotions and relies on expressing himself physically, namely through fighting.

Junior’s cartoons and his ability to make art act as “lifeboats” against poverty, alcoholism, and the difficulty of growing up on the reservation. Throughout the book, he uses his cartoons and his writing to deal with the darker and more difficult aspects of his life, finding solace in art making over the course of the book as he comes of age and finds his place in the world.