Posting for Hillary again:
In the basketball game, against Wellpinit, Reardan crushed Wellpinit by about forty points. Junior cries at the end of the game because of how guilty he feels about winning. The Wellpinit kids have nothing, while the Reardan kids have everything. Junior cries because he realizes who he used to be. He remembered he used to be one of them. In fact, he is indeed one of them. He lives on the same reservation as all of those players. He was mad about losing to them before he remembered their perspective. "I was suddenly ashamed of my anger, my rage, and my pain"(196).
Arnold cries because he knows how little they have. How much their lives suck. Arnold has taken from them one of the few things in their lives, their pride. The players on the other team were happy with themselves when they beat "the mighty Reardan." They were proud of themselves and felt good about themselves. Living on a poor reservation with a bad schooling system, it's fairly hard to feel good about yourself. As a rare event in some of these players lives, they were the best at something, basketball. They were the only team that defeated Reardan. However, when Junior scored that first three points out of rage and hatred, he felt great, but after the game, he felt differently. He felt awful because he had ruined one of the good things in those players' lives. He feels selfish for being angry about losing to them, and he feels like a total jerk for beating them. That is why Arnold cried after the basketball game against Wellpinit.
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ReplyDeleteBefore going to Reardan, Arnold was absolutely terrified about being the only Indian in the community of whites. This is because he knew hat Indians were nothig compared to the whites. They had everything. However, Arnold stated that Indians lost everything, and they only knew how to lose and be lost (173). When he entered Reardan, he quickly became a "hero," despite the racism he faced, when he was "the star basketball player." Arnold felt as if he gained everything he lost and even earned a new, happy life. However, when he beats Wellpinit, he realizes that the Wellpinit team, or the Indians, had the last hope for the rez—the basketball team—and they just lost their last hope. Arnold faces his old self/identity thinking about himself around those who had lost everything with him.
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