Sherman Alexie’s novel; The Absolutely True Diary Of a Part Time Indian is about a young teenager name Arnold who faced liminality in his life. Arnold decides to attend an all white rich school. Arnold wasn’t used to the lifestyle they lived. While attending the school, Arnold faces liminality by living in between the white world and the native american world. Also through the rich and poor education methods. In my pastiche, I mentioned how I faced liminality in my life. I was stuck in between being a full time professional dancer and a scholar student. Alexie Sherman’s book and my pastiche favors each other a little. We used 2 of the same IB learner profile traits. Reflection and communicator. Additionally, in my pastiche I tried to emulate the different techniques that Alexie used in his book, such as; humor technique and poetic technique. I also used characterization methods, connotative diction and I drew a picture that symbolizes my use of liminality by imitating one of Alexie Sherman’s pictures in his book.
One of the techniques that I tried to use in my pastiche was the humor technique. Just like in Alexis’s Novel, Arnold was very humorous throughout the whole book. In my Pastiche I tried to slide in a very humorous line. In paragraph 8, I expressed my feelings by using inappropriate language but in a funny way. I said “ And at that moment Arianna knew she had f’d up” because when my teacher told me that I had missed two homework’s I was basically put into a hole. I already had a show to memorize and now I have homework to worry about. All of the pressure was on me… but I knew that I had to get it done. Arnold also used honor technique, but his version is different from mine. He is more of a sarcastic person in his story and mine was just being funny.
Another significant aspect of Alexie’s writing is his poetic language, especially when he uses onomatopoeia, which is a technique that is used for imitating a sound and I also similes, which is used to compare one thing to another using “like” or “as”. One place that Alexie uses onomatopoeia is when describing the sound of him beating the van with a shovel. “ Smash! Boom! Bam” ( Alexie 17). Meanwhile, I used onomatopoeia in the following sentence “…I looked at him, then looked at my papers with a big smile and replied “ BOOM! in your face , I’ve completed all of my work on time even though I had a busy weekend!” describing my excitement for being able to complete my homework during the little bit of time that I had. Alexie also used the poetic technique of similes. A piece from the book where Alexie used this technique is when he said ‘I just ran like a fullback.’ (Alexie 141). Junior “Arnold” was comparing the way he was running with a fullback. In my pastiche I compared my mothers smiled with the brightness of the sun in paragraph 4 saying “My mother woke me up with a big smile. Her smile was so big and bright like the sun itself”. I found this really funny because my mother’s smile is really beautiful and bright” so comparing it to the sun in the daytime when it is really bright to me made sense!
127 our experts are availableright now
In my pastiche, I came across some diction and connotation that I used. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, He used a lot of diction and connotation throughout the whole book. In my pastiche I feel like my tone is Joyful, Empathetic and Thoughtful. I showed me being Joyful when I talked about being really excited about performing the Nutcracker. I also showed being Empathetic when my dance teacher informed us that we would have to miss two days of school out of that week, even though I had tons of homework. Last, but not least I showed being thoughtful when instead of playing hand games with my friends, I decided to find a corner and complete my homework so that it would be finished in time. Arnold’s tone in the book is what Alexie calls it “ Humorous, Hyperbolic and Hopeful”. Arnold shows Humorous because he is funny, he cracks jokes and draws funny pictures no matter what his mood is. Arnold shows hyperbolic because he his mind is full of everything. Words, thoughts, pictures and more. Arnold shows hopefulness because even though Arnold goes through a lot of pain and medical issues, his drawings always shows the bright side. He is just a joyful kid, he’s very positive and happy to be alive.
We also showed connotation in both the book and my pastiche. In my pastiche in the 2nd paragraph I used the word pumped in reference to being excited about my upcoming performance. However, the literally meaning of the word pump is to move vigorously up and down or to force something to move in a specified direction. In The book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, on page 126 Alexie uses the word blood to represent new meme era in the following sentence, “ It will be good to have you out there. We need some new blood.” But literally it is a red liquid that circulates in the arteries and veins of humans and other vertebrate animals, carrying oxygen to and carbon dioxide from the tissues of the body.
Since I take IB classes, I’ve used IB learner profile to describe the comparison of both the book and my pastiche. I chose Reflection and Communication. We both showed being a Risk Taker because we did things that we knew was going to affect us. For example, In my pastiche, I was taking a big risk missing two days of school because I was putting my academics at risk, but because dancing is so important to me, I went ahead and took the chance. Arnold was being a risk taker on page 18. I marked in my book that he was being a Risk Taker because he knew that there was going to be a big chance that he would get hurt if he had gone to the party but he took that chance and went anyway. We were also communicators because Arnold communicated a lot through his art. He felt as though words were too limited and people understand visually better than verbally. I was being a communicator because before I made any decisions I had a meeting with the board of education first just to make sure we were all on the same page of what was going on.
I also tried to imitate one of Alexie’s drawings. On page 102, Arnold drew a picture of him and Rowdy in superhero costumes, giving each other fist bumps. He drew the picture because he missed his best friend and him and Rowdy always did everything together and even when they were stuck in a hard situation they pushed through and got it done. My version of the picture is going to be the two sides of me.. The school girl and the dancer reuniting together to symbolize even though I have two different sides to me, I always get the job done no matter what.
In conclusion, Arnold and I shared some similarities in both the pastiche and the book. My intentions for the audience was to show readers how life is being in two different worlds and how I balance out two totally different subjects. I think this connects to Sherman Alexie’s book because Arnold was also stuck in two different worlds and had to adapt to a new environment. When I started dancing I also had to adapt to a new environment because at that time I didn’t know anything about dancing professionally. Also, I believe that Arnold had to take on a lot of challenges and so did I. We both shared the same IB learner profile traits and we both had similar emotions.
