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Article Evaluation - Absolutely True Diary Of a Part-Time Indian

• lack of information on Alexie's background and how it's relevant to the novel in "Sherman Alexie's biographical background and purpose" section but appears in "Autobiographical elements" section - wouldn't these two sections convey the same message? Seems redundant
• Appears to be multiple footnote links that do not lead to a valid source (i.e. introduction after "plot" (#6) - maybe referenced article has been deleted?
• Plot section - deaths of all his family members are at the end of the plot but that is confusing to the reader since they aren't in sequential order with the recounting of the plot

Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Edits

• While suffering some injuries from the game, Junior and his coach become closer as Coach tells him that he admires Junior’s commitment to the team. Later on, his grandmother, who Junior looks up to most, is hit and killed by a drunk driver. Some time after his grandmother’s funeral, a family friend, Eugene, is shot in the face by his friend Bobby after fighting over alcohol. After grieving and reflecting on his loved ones’ deaths, Junior plays in his basketball team’s second match against Wellpinit.

Later, Junior receives news of the her sister and her husband were killed while their trailer was burning down.

Looking for Alaska Themes Section:

Search for Meaning- After Alaska’s death, Pudge and Colonel investigate the circumstances surrounding the traumatic event. While looking for answers, the boys are subconsciously dealing with their grief, and their obsession over these answers transforms into a search for meaning. Pudge and Colonel want to find out the answers to certain questions surrounding Alaska’s death, but in reality, they are enduring their own labyrinths of suffering. When their theology teacher Mr. Hyde poses a question to his class about the meaning of life, Pudge takes this opportunity to write about it as a labyrinth of suffering. He accepts that it exists and admits that even though the tragic loss of Alaska created his own labyrinth of suffering, he “'still believes in the Great Perhaps,'” signifying that Pudge can only search for meaning of his life through inevitable grief and suffering. Literary scholar Barb Dean analyzes Pudge and the Colonel’s quest for answers as their venture into finding a deeper meaning to life. Because it “becomes their obsession, a way to navigate around the really stark pain of their loss,” Dean states that it leads to Pudge finding his way through his own personal labyrinth of suffering and finding deeper meaning to his life.

Transformation from Adolescence to Adulthood- When a loved one dies unexpectedly, it takes a toll on his or her family and friends. This is the case for the students at Culver Creek Boarding School, but more specifically for her closest friends, Pudge and the Colonel. Scholar Barb Dean explores this theme, where she asserts that it is normal to seek answers about what happened and why. She also states that in writing Looking for Alaska, John Green wished to dive deeper into the grieving process by asking the question “…how does one rationalize the harshness and messiness of life when one has, through stupid, thoughtless, and very human actions, contributed to that very harshness?” Pudge and the Colonel blame themselves for Alaska’s death because they do not stop her from driving while intoxicated, so their grieving process consists of seeking answers surrounding her death since they feel as if it is their responsibility for leading her to her death. They grow up faster than expected while investigating Alaska’s death because, as Dean states, by exploring his labyrinth of suffering, it is his “rite of passage” into adulthood as he begins to learn more about himself through his grieving for Alaska.

Hope- The theme of hope plays a major role in Looking for Alaska because even though the some of the novel’s prominent themes are about death, grief and loss, John Green ties hope into the end of the novel to solve Pudge’s internal conflict brought on by Alaska’s death. In Barb Dean’s chapter about the novel, she takes a closer look into Mr. Hyde’s theology class where he discusses the similarity between the founding figures of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, “'that each brought a message of radical hope'” Mr. Hyde also asks the class what their call for hope is, which, for Pudge, is his escape of his personal labyrinth of suffering. For Pudge, as Dean examines in her chapter, his call for hope is knowing that “suffering is real and cannot be removed” but also knowing that “it can be navigated through friends, through forgiveness, and through the belief that people are ‘greater than the sum of [their] parts’". Dean offers Green's words that he writes fiction in order to “'keep that fragile strand of radical hope [alive], to build a fire in the darkness.’”