A Powerful Line

The chapter "Hope Against Hope" in the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Shermin Alexie is fascinating to interpret. It talks about how on the reservation many Indians lack hope for their future. A powerful quote from the chapter is"Every white person on this rez should get smashed in the face. But let me tell you this. All the Indians should get smashed in the face, too."(42) This quote was said by Mr. P. He say's that every white person should get smashed in the face because in the book it talks about how in earlier times he and other teachers were told to take all the Indian culture out of the Indians, and he now realizes it was wrong. The reason he said that all Indians should also get smashed in the face is because none of the Indians stood up for their culture while it was being taken away from them. All the Indians just lost hope. They stopped dreaming. Mr. P. is showing in this quote that even though someone tells you that you cannot do something you cannot give up. 

Another quote that supports my reasoning is"Had she been hanging on to her dream of being a writer, but only barely hanging on, and something made her let go." This quote, from page 39, is explaining how Arnold's sister once had enjoyed writing novels, but she thought she would not get any where by writing these novels. She stopped writing because she lost hope, like every Indian. She thought that her novels would never be successful, because of the atmosphere in which she grew up in. She was raised thinking that no one was ever smart or successful enough to be able to leave the reservation. That is why Mr. P. says that Indians should get smashed in the face. Indians are smart, but they are not confident enough to see that they are smart, so they just stop working toward their goals. They think that their goals are impossible to achieve because no one else on the reservation has tried to achieve them. They are living their life in the past, in the sense that they do not believe they can be successful because of their history of being poor.

In both these quotes Mr. P. is trying to show his frustration toward the Indian society, in the sense that they grow up and automatically assume that they will not succeed in life, so they stop trying. They stop trying to reach whatever they had hoped for as an infant. As the Indians get older they predict that they have no fate. Mr. P. is saying that they can only blame the whites so much, because when it all comes down to the end the Indians never fought back. They quietly let the whites take away their culture, hopes, and dreams. I predict that the first quote that I wrote about will have an impact on how Arnold will look at his life.

Carly