Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian Summary

When you believe in yourself, you can do anything you set your mind to. In Sherman Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Arnold, the main character and narrator, takes basketball very seriously. Arnold lives on a Spokane Indian reservation in Washington, and once attended high school there. After a motivational conversation with one of his teachers, Arnold decides to transfer to Reardan, the all-white school 22 miles away from the rez with much higher education quality. His switch to Reardan also means that he needs to switch basketball teams, there he meets “Coach”. At first, Arnold didn’t know what to expect from the coach of the varsity basketball team. He had first assumed that Coach would be racist, like all of the other …show more content…
Coach learned that Indian people are equal to white people. He also learned how to really believe in Arnold, and his positive attitude spread to Arnold, causing him to believe in himself, too. “Coach had become, like, the priest of basketball, and I was his follower. And I was going to follow him onto the court and shut down my best friend. I hoped so. ‘I can do it,’ I said to Coach, to my teammates, to the world. ‘You can do it,’ Coach said. ‘I can do it.’ ‘You can do it.’ ‘I can do it’” (page 189). This support from his Coach and teammates gives Arnold confidence and makes him want to be a better person. “I mean, I'd always been the lowest Indian on the reservation totem pole—I wasn't expected to be good so I wasn't. But in Reardan, my coach and the other players wanted me to be good. They needed me to be good. They expected me to be good. And so I became good. I wanted to live up to expectations” (page 180).This shows me as a reader how influential it is to have someone who believes in you. The Coach from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian has taught me that when someone in your life believes in you it becomes a lot easier to believe in