THE END

The end of this book is tragic. Many deaths and sad events happen that made Arnold reflect and change his way of thinking. All this loses were caused by alcohol. First his grandmother is hit and killed by a drunk driver, a fellow Indian; family friend Eugene is shot in the face by his friend Bobby after fighting over alcohol; and his sister and her husband die when their mobile home is accidentally set on fire after a night of heavy drinking. This events test Junior and his hopes for the future are now getting lower and lower. He now wonders how dark this world can be and if one time an accident like this happens to him, what would he do? He has to many things in his minds. His family, his friends, his old friends, his school, too many things in mind disturbs Juniors life. But this events also allow him to see how much his family and new friends love him with their support and their help for Arnold in this hard times. He now sees himself as a part-time Indian and a part-time American, just like the title. At the end he reconcile with Rowdy during a basketball game and agree to be together no matter were the future takes them. He end just like he started, happy with everyone and ones again together with Rowdy. 

"But I was crying for my tribe, too. I was crying because I knew five or ten or fifteen more Spokanes would die during the next year, and that most of them would die because of booze."

Arnold now describes the reservation as a place of senseless and meaningless deaths. People deserve a better life and accidents because of things like alcohol can change someones life and here Junior understands the true meaning of being alive and of being a healthy person and he is grateful of it. Many people have been left behind because of stupid accidents and he wont allow another close friend or family of his to pass away again because of alcohol.

"Rowdy and I played one-on-one for hours. We played until dark. We played until the streetlights lit up the court. We played until the bats swooped down at our heads. We played until the moon was huge and golden and perfect in the dark sky.

We didn't keep score"

 

This is how this book ends, with a meaning full event between Rowdy and Arnold being friends once again. At the end he achieved what he wanted, happiness and truth. Now he knew everything, he knew how to make friends and he knew how things should be made. He was now kind of wise, he felt important now and that every kid in this world no matter how poor they are, they can make a change. 

THE BIGGEST DECISION OF HIS LIFE

 At the end this book was great and taught me that even when everything seems lost, there is a solution and that hope and a future always exist. Little things like changing school and changing the place you live can change your life. This book is easily one of the best books I have read so far and it helped me understand that everyone has a duty on this world and that everyone is in this world for a reason. I truly loves this book and I think it was the best choice for me to read a book like this, entertaining, sentimental, fictional but with a real message.

Rivalry

Junior's new friend, Roger, makes a suggestion that would change Junior completely. He tells Junior to make the tryouts for the basketball team, and surprisingly he manages to enter the varsity team and this leads him into other conflicts later. He trained hard for his first game and manages to win, but everything changed when he was notified he was going to play against his former school, Wellpinit. Playing against them is shocking for Junior and specially against Rowdy, Wellpinit's basketball star. The first match demonstrates Junior how angry the reservation is with him for leaving him and transferring. Everyone turns their backs to Junior and during the game Rowdy elbows Junior in the head and knocks him off unconsciously. In the second game, Reardan manages to win and Junior blocks Rowdy in the game and a rivalry starts. He feels victorious until he saw Wellpinit players faces after their defeat and he remembers the difficulties they face at home and their lack of hope for a future. Ashamed he breaks down into tears and vomits in the locker room, nothing was the same.

"But for once, and for the only time in my life, I jumped higher than Rowdy.

I rose above him as he tried to dunk it.

I TOOK THE BALL RIGHT OUT OF HIS HANDS."

 

 This quote demonstrates how Junior has changed during the story. Before he entered Reardan, he would do anything to make Rowdy feel good and if he needed to loose to make Rowdy feel good, he would do it. Now he is different, he is not timid anymore now he feels comfortable, he feels somehow superior and now he is competitive and doesn't care if his opponent feels good or not.

"But I looked over at the Wellpinit Redskins, at Rowdy.

I knew that two or three of those Indians might not have eaten breakfast that morning.

No food in the house.

I knew that seven or eight of those Indians lived with drunken mothers and fathers.

I knew that one of those Indians had a father who dealt crack and meth.

I knew two of those Indians and fathers in prison.

I knew that none of them was going to college. Not one of them.

And I knew that Rowdy's father was probably going to beat the crap out of him for losing this game."

 

The basketball games between Reardan and Wellpinit are complicated for us, as readers, since we are cheering for Junior, but we also kind of want the poor people at Wellpinit to win. Junior now starts ti regret his decision to play against his old friends, he feels guilty of leaving Rowdy and he finally understand how poor people really feel and are. He miss his old and simple life. 

 

 

JUNIOR'S CHANGE DURING HIS TWO SCHOOLS

 This part really changes Junior's life and the reader can see how he has grow up and change during this story. The climax finally occurs when he realize how bad he was after beating his former school Wellpinit. He felt like a different person, he knew his life had changed and that no matter what he did he couldn't go back to the old and boring Arnold (first time in the book he is actually named with his real name). He regrets his choice, he feels sorry for his old friends, he knew that everything was going to change after he left his old life. 

 

The New Life

Junior now has made a choice and decided to leave his school and attend Reardan High School. This school is not only better but also it is a school in which kids with lots of money attend and most of them are white. The only Indians are Junior and the mascot. Rowdy however is upset of Junior's decision and their relationship isn't so close anymore and for the next year they don't see each other too often. Now Junior is another guy and he is now in love with the most beautiful and popular girl in school, Penelope. He also makes a new friend called Gordy and they study together all the time.

After being around white people for a descent amount of time, he realize his culture and theirs is much different and now he sees how much stronger his family ties are compared with the white people. Their parents don't attend to events and they grow up with different norms. The school star athlete Roger punches Junior and Junior strikes back making Roger and his friends to respect him and to make Junior gain popularity and friends. Also Junior gets to know his crush, Penelope better and also now he is popular with the girls. Everything is perfect for Junior.

"Indian families stick together like Gorilla Glue, the strongest adhesive in the world. My mother and father both lived within two miles of where they were born, and my grandmother lived one mile from where she was born."

Arnold tells us that his family has never, ever left the reservation. They have always been there from 1881 and I think is hard for Junior to leave his reservation but somehow he needs to do it for his best. His family I think are going to try to prevent this but sooner or later Junior needs a future and there is no future in the reservation but in the outside world there is. 

"I love Indians. I love our songs, your dances, and your souls. And I love your art. I collect Indian art." 

This quote is said by Ted, a billionaire who collects Indian art. This quote in a sense changes Junior's way of appreciating his culture. He feels important for the first time and now he is proud of being Indian, for him it was an accomplishment and now indirectly he is more confident of himself. 

JUNIOR'S COMPARISON OF HIM AND HIS CLASSMATES

This part of the book has made me want to read this book everyday. The author is just so good at making the reader feel connected with the book and with all this experiences and stories, I feel like if I new Junior my entire life. I think this part is the rising action and all of this is going to suddenly lead to a bigger problem and then the story is going to be amazing. What the book does the best is in the illustrations, they are the perfect and help the reader to keep track and laugh for a good time reading.  

A New Journey

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, written by Sherman Alexie is a entertaining book where the main character, Junior, lives poverty in the Spokane Indian Reservation. This main character is not like the others; he was born with hydrocephalus, (extra fat in the brain) and gave him some serious defects. He suffers from seizures, poor eyesight, stuttering, and lisping; therefore he is picked up by other kids and gets bullied in school. For his luck his best friend Rowdy is a huge guy who everyone is afraid of and when Junior gets bullied or beaten up, Rowdy does his work. His family is suffering economical problems and Junior sometimes starves for days and he can’t do anything about it. Another problem he has is that he cannot afford medications and when he is sick he has nothing else to do that to wait for the best, or when his dog Oscar got sick, the only thing he could do was kill him so that Oscar can stop suffering. Junior is now in a difficult situation in where he is asked to leave his reservation and attend to another school because there is no more hope in that place and he has to start a new life. He doesn't know what to do but in his heart he knows the best decision is to leave. 

"I wish I were magical, but I am really just a poor-ass reservation kid living with his poor-ass family on the poor-ass Spokane Indian Reservation."

This pretty much determines a lot about Junior. Though he tries to see himself in a positive light, he ultimately comes to the conclusion that he is just a "poor-ass kid." Also we can see in this quote that his economic situation isn't specific to his family, his entire reservation is poor, and a good future is very far away for him and the rest of the community.

"My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people."

Poverty is an inherited condition, and it is not a choice. It is something that you are born into and sometimes this can change your life from age 0 until you die. It is something unfair and everyone should have the same rights to shine in their future, but kids like Junior sometimes the only thing they have is hope and wishes and some of them are impossible to complete without wealth. 

JUNIOR SINCE DAY 1

This book has been great so far and it describes the settings and the characters in a way that you can feel connected to. The author makes a really good job using characterization and imagery to bring depth to the story and to make the reader to appreciate this book non-stop. The introduction was loud and clear and every character has their own traits and is recognizable among each other. In other words, this book has been great and very entertaining and I cant wait for the main problem to occur and read the struggle of the character with society to see how this character find a solution and starts to be someone in this cruel world.

The Finale

                Immediately Alex is rescued and taken to an hospital in Grenoble France. Good news arrive and doctors manage to save him from the bullet that hit him and he is OK, even though he is hurt the MI6 requires his help and Alex continue fighting. The MI6 then sends him out again but now with support, the SAS team of soldiers arrive to liberate all the students at Point Blank. In that moment Alex sees Wolf again, the chief commander in action of the MI6 and with all that help the kids are free, the only thing was that no one saw Dr. Grief and Mrs. Stellenbosch. Alex run to the Helicopter Station where he saw Dr. Grief already escaping and Mrs. Stellenbosch aiming ta him with a gun. Just as she is going to kill Alex for a second time, Wolf appears and covers Alex but three shots hit him, luckily Wolf managed to also shot Mrs. Stellenbosch and made her fall out a window to her death. Wolf was wound but Alex was OK so as soon as the helicopter is elevating Alex with a magnificent snowmobile manages to hit the helicopter and out Dr. Grief down. 

Alex arrives back to London and the MI6 tells him that all fifteen clones have been arrested. Alex was given long vacations, enough for him to revive himself for a next awesome mission.

SKELETON KEY

Dr. Grief falling down the heli

This book definitely is one of my favorite books until this moment. Action packed, good plot and many problems leading to a big problem is what made this book so good. After reading Stormbreaker (the first part of this series) I though that it couldn't get better than that, but Point Blank has really surprise me and I cant wait to start reading the next book, Skeleton Key. Alex is too much of a protagonist and the roll he plays in this series is well described and the author of this book, Anthony Horowitz, makes a very good job using imagery to describe the senses that Alex feels. I would give this book a 11 out of 10 and I would recommend this book to any person that likes action or to someone who doesn't like to read because this book makes you feel a love to read. 

Mystery Solved

            After several investigations Alex finally found some useful and good information. Alex wile wondering through the school, finds a basement jail in which many students are trapped, including James and Paul (Roscoe son). But how they were still upstairs and downstairs in the basement? There were replicas of each student and all the real students were trapped in this jail. Alex reveals his true identity to James and Paul and immediately calls the MI6 for help. Someone hears about Alex true identity and secretly tells Mrs. Stellenbosch (Dr. Grief assistant). Then she knocks Alex and leave him unconscious and handcuffed to a chair. Then Dr. Grief reveals his evil plan to Alex, called the "Gemini" Project that consists in destroying the world by cloning himself and the students trapped in the basement jail. Now everything made sense to Alex, he discovered that the death of Roscoe and Ivanov happened because they started to be suspicious of their son's behavior and that was a huge thread to the plan. But why only taking rich kids? Eventually after the death of their parents they would pass their inheritance and by them being clones all that money would go to Dr. Grief, making him the most powerful man on earth.

Alex uses his exploding ear-stud to escape the room he was locked in and starts snowboarding to escape Point Blank. Dr. Grief immediately sent guards to find Alex and kill him but with the rest of his gadgets he manages to escape but when he was almost out of town he reaches the roof of a train but there was already a guard locking his weapon to Alex and shoots him making Alex fall the train and notified as death. 

Students at Point Blank being Cloned

It is impossible that Alex is death. The book cannot end with Dr. Grief winning and Alex death, there is 7 more books that go after this one so definitely Alex is still alive in some sort. I don't know what to predict what is coming I suppose that somehow Alex is going to be saved since the MI6 is already notified with the problem and as soon as they arrive to Alex they are going to find Dr. Grief and arrest him. I cannot stop reading this series, I hope Alex can finish his job and arrest Grief.

The Arrival

            Alex finally arrives to the academy and the first person he meets in the founder, Dr Grief. Alex describes him as being an old, tall, elegant but mysterious men, since he had job to do he couldn't trust anyone. Later, on his tour in the convent he meets a guy named James Sprintz who later on would become his most trustful roommate. After a nice greeting Alex already had met almost all of the people in the campus, it was nice and tidy and you couldn't get lost inside. After a better introduction with his roommate James he gathers some very useful information. He told Alex that every kid in the academy were rebellious and disobedient and mischievously after a certain time they became complacent from day to night. This worries Alex since at the beginning he knew some kind of illegal scientist acts were going on so he started to get deeper with the case. James also convinced Alex to help him with a escape plan, even though Alex cannot leave the campus until the mystery is resolved, he agrees to help James.

It was midnight and Alex sneak out of his room to try to find some helpful information, but the only thing he sees is his friend James being forcibly dragged downstairs but when he entered his bedroom again James was already in it. Things were going crazy and Alex didn't knew exactly were he was going. The next day at breakfast James attitude towards his escaping plan seemed to change and Alex notices that James has become exactly like the other students. 

 

There is a lot of mysterious things going on in this part of the book, and there is still a big question mark on the deaths of Roscoe and Viktor Ivanov. Maybe there is a link with their sons attending the same institute but maybe not. I think Alex is going to somehow find the answer but with so much unexpected things happening I know it is not going to be easy for him to discover the truth. My best guess is that there is something involve with science and they are doing something wrong to this kids. But how can this connect to both deaths? It is complicated to have a good guess in this point of the book, but I am looking forward to keep reading this awesome book and maybe this awesome series.