The chapter “Why Chicken Means So Much to Me” of the diary “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, which is written by Sherman Alexie was published in September 2007, deals with Arnold’s feelings about poorness and his family’s situation and also the feelings about his dog.
In the following im going to analyse Junior’s feelings and his language.
In the beginning of the chapter Junior tells the reader about his cartoonist career and about his cartoons in general. He says that “[his] cartoons will never take the place of food or money”, (ll.2-3 p.17) in his life. So he wants to tell the reader that in his opinion he’s not a very good cartoonist. He wishes that his cartoons could be real, so he draws something for example food and then he could eat it. But he knows that nobody can do something like that because it is megical. He describes this with a Alliteration (“But I can’t do that. Nobody can do that, not even the hungriest magician in the world”, ll.6-7 p.17). Also you can see that he’s not very self confident and also depressive because of his situation in the reservation and the poverty of his family (“[…] I am really just a poor-ass reservation kid living with his poor-ass family on the poor-ass Spokane Indian Reservation”, ll.8-10 p.17). He wishes that his situation would be better sometime and “[his] parents will come bursting trough the door with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken”, ll.15-17 p.17. But Junior is not only depressive because of the poverty, also he is depressive because of his dog and bestfriend Oscar died. Junior thinks that he was the best and most dependaple living thing in the world (enumeration:”[…]but he was the only living thing that I could depend on. He was more dependable than my parents, grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins, and big sister. He thaught me more than any teachers ever did”, ll.10-14 p.19). But in the end he knows that he could do nothing to heal Oscar because of the poorness (Alliteration:”There was nothing I could do to save Oscar.Nothing.Nothing.Nothing”, ll.14-17 p.20).
So all in all you can see that Junior is not very self confident and also depressive because of the problems with his family and his life in general but he has hope that it would be better one day.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie 