The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian: Motifs 2 key examples

As if this foundational trauma weren't enough, Junior loses his grandmother, his father's best friend, and his sister in quick succession over the school year. Each death seems more senseless than the last. Grandmother Spirit is killed by a drunk driver, a victim of alcoholism even though she herself never drank. Eugene's drunken friend shoots him in the face over the last swig of wine. Mary's drunken friend, meanwhile, leaves a hot plate on and burns down her trailer while Mary and her husband are passed out drunk. These people meant everything to Junior, but their deaths all needlessly point to the same problem that everyone already knows about: the horrific impact of alcohol on American Indian reservations.

Other students at Reardan High School experience grief (over a grandmother or over a beloved pet) as a major turning point in their coming-of-age narratives. For Junior, there is no way to make his grief into a milestone because it is a constant and senseless ache. People just die, and he must keep living his life. This piling on of grief is downright inconvenient to the "important" business of growing up and fitting in at his new school, which is the main challenge around which the novel's plot revolves. As a motif, Junior's grief pushes back against the idea that difficult experiences make children "grow up too fast," as if they are speeding through the experiences that make up a childhood. On the contrary, Junior has to exercise incredible resilience to keep participating in the rituals of "growing up" from inside what he calls a "grief storm."

Junior has long thought of his sister as the burnout who lives in the basement, so he is surprised to learn from Mr. P that she has a lifelong dream of writing romance novels. Historically, romance novels have been dismissed by many as frivolous or even a bad influence on readers, in part because they depict women who manage to prioritize their own pleasure and happiness. To Junior, they represent a fantasy of freedom completely incongruent with Mary's actual life. Junior believes that romance novels provide Mary with the same kind of escapism drawing gives him. He begins doodling imaginary covers of some of the books Mary might write based on events in their lives. Often, the doodles serve as a way to make light of awkward or even traumatic moments, such as the time he flirts with Penelope right after she has been throwing up in the bathroom. Junior draws an imaginary romance cover that makes fun of his own "fantasy" of kissing a girl whose breath visibly reeks of vomit. With this doodle, he both expresses his fantasy and shuts it down as a pipe dream.

In the passage above, Junior realizes that romance novels might be more than escapism for Mary: she is trying to turn her actual life into a romance novel. This realization makes Junior both "happy" and "scared" because it challenges the idea that anyone's life story is predetermined. If Mary can turn her fantasy into reality, what should Junior do with his own life? For that matter, how are his choices now shaping the world around him into something new? There is both enormous possibility and enormous responsibility that go with the power to write his own story.

For Mary, the fantasy cannot last. It literally goes up in smoke when her trailer catches fire and kills her. Junior is horrified at the idea that he is responsible for her death because he inspired her to leave the reservation. Still, even though Mary dies a tragic death, she inspires Junior just as much as he inspires her. Both siblings leave home in pursuit of a fantasy; Mary teaches Junior that he can expect the world to be cruel but that he can dream big anyway. Some of his dreams might come true, at least for a little while.