Sherman Alexie's the Absolute Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Hannah Galve
Chris Rideout
ENG 1112-005
December 2, 2013

Throughout Sherman Alexie's The Absolute Diary of A Part-Time Indian, escape has been shown to be a consistent theme for many of its characters. The idea of escaping, both  a literal and figurative type of escape is featured in the story and portrayed in both negative and positive ways.

The main protagonist Arnold, his sister Mary and his best friend Rowdy all have a figurative way of escaping the problems they have in their lives.  For Arnold, it is in his cartoons and drawings where he finds solace. He describes words as being "too limited" (7) and therefore he chooses to express how he's feeling via his drawings instead.  He says so himself that when he draws he "feel[s] like it might be [his] only real chance to escape the reservation" (8).  Arnold has spent his entire life believe that his dreams don't matter because that's what he's been taught  all his life. But when he draws, he allows himself to dream of a better life for himself, a way to imagine a future where he turns out to be someone, someone successful and rich and no longer living in poverty. Rowdy and Arnold's form of escape is a lot similar, in that they both find comfort in pictures and drawings except in Rowdy's case instead of drawing it, he enjoys reading them. Rowdy's love for comics echoes Arnold's love for drawing but what they're escaping from is vastly different. As Arnold explains it, Rowdy "likes to pretend he lives inside the comic books" (30). Arnold uses his drawings as a way to dream of a better future for himself but with Rowdy, it is truly a form of escape, one away from his abusive home life. He's not using his love for comics as a way to dream of a future for himself but instead to merely get away from what his current life is right now. As for Arnold's sister, Mary, it's not in pictures where she finds an escape, for her it is in words. Mr. P reveals to Arnold that Mary had wanted to be a writer, a writer for romance novels to be more specific. Similar to Arnold, Mary uses writing as a way to dream about a future that she is led to believe she can never have. All three characters use words and pictures to dream and to escape. It allows them to believe, even for just a moment, that there is more to their life than just the poverty and sadness that surrounds it.

As for literal exa

It's not just Arnold that tries to escape, we see it in many of the secondary characters in the novel as well. Each and every one of them have different methods of escaping. Rowdy's love for comics and his friendship with Arnold is his way of escaping his father's abuse. In a way, Rowdy also uses his fists as a way to escape the pain of his home life. "Whenever he came to school with a lack eye, Rowdy made sure to give black eyes to two kids picked at random" (53), Arnold explains. Since Rowdy is unable to stand up and hurt his father himself, he lashes out and hurts other people instead. That is how he deals with his own pain, by hurting others. Meanwhile Arnold's sister is a lot similar to Arnold himself, but instead of finding an escape in the form of pictures, for her it is words. "I want the pictures; my sister wants the words" (49),  really says it all. While Arnold uses cartoons and drawings to dream of a better life for himself, his sister Mary used writing and stories to do the same. Penelope is another character that we see having a particular method to escape, "Penelope gorges her pain and then throws it up and flushes it away" (140). In this instance, it is in the form of being bulimic. This is how she deals with her loneliness and her facade of a perfect life crumbling before her. And lastly, for Arnold's parents, alcohol is their form of escape. They use it to drink their pain away and to temporarily get away from the unhappiness they have in their own lives.