Life on the Reservation is hard for all Indians. However, it is even harder for Junior because of his disabilities. White people have it easier because they have a long history of being rich with rich friends. In this world hope is now just another word for Money, this is why Junior thinks hope is white. The reason for hope for him is a mythical creature is because it is one of the rarest things in the world. Not only is he poor, he is living on a Reservation, and has Physical disabilities. This is the reason that Mr. P wanted him to transfer schools. Junior has one thing that can give him hope, he is smart. “You’re going to find more and more hope the farther and farther you walk away from this sad, sad, sad reservation” (43).
Part of the reason that Junior thinks so simple minded about hope and that only white people have it is because of the environment around him. When he asks his parents who have the most hope then both think of the same answer.
“Who has the most hope?”
“White people,” my parents said at the same time.”
This is why Junior wants to transfer also because he wants to have hope like all those kids do. He doesn’t want to be the only one trying to find that mythical creature to grant him hope. He wants to get it how everyone else does. And he might be able to do that if he works hard enough, as Mr. P said he is a smart kid with lots of potentials.
Questions:
Why do you think that he has suddenly been thinking about hope? Throughout this book has there been any other signs of the importance of hope?
Arnold always knew that the people his reservation were poor, and without hope, but he never really thought about his sense of hope and what he can do about it. When Arnold recieved his mother's old book he came to realize that his home town had been sucked dry of all its hope and that if he stayed he too would accept his life of poverty. This scene shows us the importance of Arnold's hope because it could very well save him from his reality at the reservation. Throughout the novel a couple of other examples of the importance of hope have popped up for example Arnold's parents are living proof of this because of how their lives have been controlled by their poverty. The enviornment that Arnold's parents lived in told them that they wouldn't ever be anything but poor, which slowly tore their sense of hope away from them. This shows that without hope people become empty and depressed, but if Arnold can keep his hope, and even strengthen it at Reardan, then he could very well save himself from poverty.
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