The hero of this story is Arnold Spirit. His name is a perfect combination of nerd and Native, which is exactly what he is. He lives on the reservation, loves Native American ceremonies, honors his heritage, but also loves comic books, is mercilessly bullied at school, and wants to be a cartoonist when he grows up.
His hopes and dreams set him apart from most of his peers, who don’t want or expect much from life. He’s encouraged by a teacher to go the school in town, where the only other Native American is the mascot — they have better facilities, better books, and better teachers, but more importantly they have other kids with hopes and dreams. This small step forward is seen as treason by his friends back home, and Arnold soon finds himself as a ghost going back and forth between a world where he isn’t welcome, and a world that doesn’t want him anymore.
It’s an incomprehensible sacrifice for a kid who just wants to draw funny pictures.
The most painful part of this supposed treachery is losing his best friend, Rowdy. Arnold makes new friends in time: Roger, whose early racist jokes hide a genuine good nature; Gordon, a brilliant kid who is alternately annoying know-it-all and preternaturally wise; and the beautiful Penelope, who becomes Arnold’s sort-of girlfriend, and from whom he finds out that even the kids at the white school think of their home as a place to escape. As Arnold slowly becomes part of their world, he feels less and less a part of the world he came from, especially as that world seems to be disintegrate in his absence.
This isn’t an after school special where it’s revealed that we’re all the same underneath our skins. The fact is that we’re not, and Alexie doesn’t gloss over that truth, any more than he glosses over truths about life on the reservations. What the book does reveal is that people are bigger than their stereotypes, if they want to be, and that people can be amazing (to paraphrase) if you let them into your life, and they let you into theirs. |
