The novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part- Time Indian” written by Sherman Alexie was published in the year 2007. It deals with the young boy Arnold called “Junior” who lives with his poor family in a reservation. In this novel Arnold tells the reader his problems in his daily life.

In the following I will analyse the feelings and emotions of Arnold in the second chapter “Why chicken means so much to me”. At the beginning of the second chapter Arnold tells something about his passion to draw cartoons (p. 17 l.1). He whises that he can make his cartoons real, that he draws something magical. So he is very sad as he realises that nobody can do this and that he is just a “poor-ass” reservation kid (p. 17 ll.7-8). On this part the author uses the stylistic form anaphora. That underlines how unhappy Arnold is because the word “poor-ass” is very often repeated. After that Arnold tells the reader something about the worst thing about being poor (p.18 l.4). He tells that his best friend Oscar, the dog, became really sick. Oscar means so much to Arnold. He was more dependabel than the parents or the gandmother (p.19 ll.11-12). So it was a shock for Arnold that his poor Indian family has not enough money for the vet (p.19 l.11-p.20 ll.1-2). That was a very sad situation for Arnold because he has not any chance to help his best friend. In this moment it was clear that Arnold was very desperate. That illustrates the anaphora on page 20 line 15-17. “Nothing. Nothing. Nothing”. The dad of Arnold tries to help Oscar and he shoots him down (p.24 ll.7-9). During this sad situation Arnold uses a lot of rhetorical questions (p.17 l.11/p.18 l.4/l.10). That has the effect that the reader is more influenced into the story. In the last part of the second chapter Arnold tells something about his parents and their unrealised dreams (p.23 ll.1-22). His mum is very intelligent. ” And she remembers everything she reads. She can recite whole pages by memory. She’s a human tape recorder”(p.23ll.2-4). After that he tells something about his dad who is a very good singer and musician (p.23 ll.8-10). It sounds a little bit that Arnold is a little bit proud about his parents but in the next lines it is also clear how desperate Arnold is. “But we reservation Indians don’t get to realize our dreams. We don’t get those chances. Or choises. We’re just poor. That’s all we are.[…] to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor.You start believing that you’re poor because you’re stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you’re stupid and ugly because you’re Indian. […]. It’s an ugly circle and there’s nothing you can do about it”(p.23 ll.14-22).

In conclusion I can say that in this second chapter the feelings of Arnold are very clear described. It is good comprehensible why Arnold is desperate. The stylistic devices help the reader to be more included in the story and it is easier to follow it. I would say that this chapter is important for the next course because in this chapter there are some important information about Arnold’s family and the hard blow, the loss of the best friend Oscar.