In the following I’m going to analyse Arnold`s feelings and emotions in the chapter “Why chicken means so much to me” and explain his emotional conditions. In this connection I will look closer at his language and the stylistic devices used in the text.

It’s very obvious that especially in this chapter Arnold uses a lot a of repetitions to stress his statements and to make them memorably. For example on page 17, ll. 8-10: “[…], but I’m really just a poor-ass reservation kid living with his poor-ass family on the poor-ass Spokane indian Reservation.”. This shows that he is not happy about being poor because he connects “poor” with “ass”, which is a negative word.

This thought gets more clear in the following of the Chapter, where he tells us about the fate of his dog Oscar, who was very important to him. This is shown with the enumaration on page 19, ll. 12-14. But one day Ocar got sick . Arnold makes use of the repetition/ anaphora “Nothing.Nothing.Nothing” (p.20), which demonstrates how desperate and hopeless he was because he couldn’t do anything to save the life of his dog. The next anaphora expresses his anger towards his dad ( p21, ll. 8-10: “I wanted to […].I wanted to […].I wanted to […]”), because he decided to end the suffer of Oscar by shooting him. But he says that he knows that he can’t blame his parents. In this context he makes use of the methaphor “[…]my mother and my father are the twin suns around which I orbit and my world would EXPLODE without them.”and the concurrent exaggeration “EXPLODE” to stress the relevance of his parents for him. As he said they are as important for him as the sun, because just like nobody and nothing could live/survive without the sun, Arnold could not live without his parents. Another aspect needed to be focused on is the fact that the most used word in this chapter is “poor” ( almost in every page) -because it’t the main topic-,connected with a lot of negative and agressive words like “hate” (p.21), “blame” (p.21), “pain”(p.24) , “nothing”, “cry” etc., to  produce a bad emotion, so the reader is forced to associate a negative feeling with the word  “poor”. But there are still some postive words like “(to) dream” (p.21) and “believe”, “trust”  and “love”, to show that there is still hope left.

The diary “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” written by Sherman Alexie was published in September 2007. The second chapter is about the poverty of Junior and his hole family.
The chapter can be divided into two paragraphs. The first paragraph is about the wish of Junior who wants to buy Kentucky Fried Chicken, but isn´t able to because it´s to expensive (p.17-18). The second paragraph tells about Juniors best friend, his dog Oscar, who becomes ill and the parents can´t pay the vet,so they decide to shoot the dog down.

Now I´m going to analyse Juniors feelings, emotional conditions and his language.

“Okay, so now you know Í´m that I´m a cartoonist.” (p.17, l.1) says Junior. He shows us that he can describe his feelings better by drawing cartoons. The repitition “poor-ass”  (p.17, ll.8ff) underlines his lack off self-confidence. It also expresses his and their parents poverty. With the exaguration “And believe me, a good piece of chicken can make anybody believe in the existence of God.” (p.17, ll. 22f), he makes his wish of eating some chicken clearer. In the following he tells us that being hungry is just one bad thing about being poor (c. p. 18, l1). “So, okay, I´ll tell you the worst thing. Last week, my best friend Oscar got really sick.” (p.18, ll. 5f) speeks Junior. With this he makes sure that his dog is more important to him than his own hunger problems. “Honestly, Oscar was a better person than any human I had ever known.” (p.19, ll15f), with this he underlines this again. At next a conversation starts between Junior and his parents. His parents tell him that they can´t pay the vet because it will be to expensive (c. p.20, ll.1f). Junior tries to convince them by saying he´ll get a job and  pay the vet back later on (c. p.20, l5) . After a while he feels he can´t convince them “There was nothing I could do to save Oscar. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.” (p20, ll14ff). With this repetition his desparation gets clear. His father wants him to carry Oscar outside and wants to shoot him down (c. p.20,ll24ff.). He thinks it will help Oscar because when he´s dead he doesn´t have to suffer anymore (c. p.20,l26). “I want to hate[…]. I want to hate […]. Iwant to blame […]. (p.21, ll8ff.). This parallelism underlines his desparation aswell. On the one hand he is really angry of his parents but on the other hand he can´t blame them because they aren´t guilty for their poverty and his world would “explode” (p.21, l14) without them (c. p.21, ll11ff).

To put it in a nutshell he seems to be really depressed person and he needs more self-confidence. without is friend he gets more sad and looses a really important part of his life.