The novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, written by Sherman Alexie and published in year 2007, is about Arnold (also called  Junior), a fourteen year old Indian boy who writes about his live in the rez and what experiences and feelings he has especially by suffering from his physical and psychological damages.

In chapter 2, which is called “Why Chicken Means So Much to Me”, Arnold tells about his family’s poverty and how it suffers from hunger which is also the conection to the chapter’s title because he describes how happy somebody can be having a chicken to eat after a long time whithout anything. In addition to that the story about the death of Arnold’s dog Oscar underlines the poverty and at the same time the sadness he lives in because the reason was that they hadn’t enaugh money to pay the vet.

In the following I am going to analyse the stylistic devices in a part of chapter 2 (p. 17-21) and their effects. At the beginning there is a repitition: “[…] I am really just a poor-ass reservation kid living with his poor-ass family on the poor-ass Spokane Indian Reservation.”(p.17, ll.8-10). This sentence stresses Arnold’s pent-up anger and that he feels as if he is imprisoned in poverty. Arnold uses irony and retorical questions while speaking about himself maybe to stay strong and not becoming completely depressed: “And now I’m sure you’re asking, ‘Okay, okay, Mr. Hunger Artist, Mr. Mouth-Full-of Words, Mr. Woe-Is-Me, Mr. Secret Recipe, what is the worst thing about being poor?'”(p.18, ll.2-4). More repititions can be found on page 20 to 21, e.g.: “There was nothing I could do to save Oscar. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.” (p. 20, ll. 14-17). Those repititions always underline his feelings, in this example the frustration about Oscar’s death. Combinated with a repitition, there is finally a Hyperbole and comparison: “I was hot mad. Volcano mad. Tsunami mad.” (p. 21, l.5).

All in all the stylistic devices give an insight into Arnold’s feelings and make it possible to the reader to understand him.