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Symbols
“I don’t know if hope is white,” Junior states, thinking about the hopefulness of the white students in Reardan. “But I do know that hope for me is like some mythical creature: white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white.” He illustrates this with a cartoon of a winged horse, flying past fluffy, smiling clouds. For Junior, whiteness, both in the sense of skin color and more broadly, symbolizes hopes and dreams: things that are both desirable and seemingly unattainable, or even, perhaps, unreal. He wants the advantages and opportunities that the white students seem to have by birthright, but (at the beginning of the novel) doubts his ability to achieve or deserve them. He also feels guilty for having that desire, since it seems to require him to betray his tribe and falsely act as something he is not. Similarly, Junior’s blond-haired, blue-eyed semi-girlfriend Penelope is described as “all white on white on white, like the most perfect kind of vanilla dessert cake you’ve ever seen.” She’s the most popular girl in the Reardan freshman class, and Junior thinks everything about her is sexy, but she’s also an unattainable girl who doesn’t return his Valentine—and as Rowdy’s and Gordy’s comments on Junior’s obsession with her suggest, his love for this white girl may not be entirely pure, since it objectifies and partly reduces her to what she represents. Meanwhile, Penelope’s own wild dreams of travel are, in Junior’s eyes, “just big goofy dreams. They’re not real.” The color white thus symbolizes the complicated nature of dreams in this novel: inspiring and aspirational, but also, like Mary’s life of romance, sometimes false, and not always to be trusted.
White Quotes in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
The The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian quotes below all refer to the symbol of White. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 11
Quotes
“Hey buddy,” I would have said. “How do I make a beautiful white girl fall in love with me?”
“Well, buddy,” he would have said. “The first thing you have to do is change the way you look, the way you talk, and the way you walk. And then she’ll think you’re her fricking Prince Charming.”
Related Characters:
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Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Diary of a Part-Time Indian LitChart as a printable PDF.
White Symbol Timeline in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
The timeline below shows where the symbol White appears in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 7 - Rowdy Sings the Blues
...outstanding athletic accomplishments. This makes Junior scared of Reardan, too. But Junior also sees the white students as being full of hope, whereas Rowdy just hates them. With a drawing of...
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Chapter 8 - How to Fight Monsters
...begins school at Reardan the next day. His dad tells him to remember that the white kids aren’t any better than him—which, according to Junior, both of them know isn’t true—and...
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...rez, his family, and himself, and illustrates the difference with a cartoon diagram of a half-white, half-Indian boy—split down the middle with opposing labels such as “Ergonomic backpack/Glad garbage book bag,”...
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Chapter 11 – Halloween
...Junior wishes he could ask Rowdy for advice about how to win over a beautiful white girl. At the same time, he imagines what Rowdy would say—that he would need to...
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Chapter 12 - Slouching Toward Thanksgiving
...Indian” once he arrives—a characteristically extreme statement that shows how deeply being ignored by the white kids affects him.
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Chapter 16 - Rowdy Gives Me Advice About Love
...volleyball game, Junior marvels at how beautiful she is with her pale skin and her white uniform: “all white on white on white, like the most perfect kind of vanilla dessert...
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Junior emails Rowdy to ask what he should do about being in love with a white girl, but Rowdy tells him to get a life: “I’m sick of Indian guys who...
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Junior asks Gordy for advice, and Gordy Googles “in love with a white girl,” finding an article about how the media will focus on the plight of one...
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Chapter 20 - Reindeer Games
...the first day of practice, he feels short, skinny, and slow, and like all the white boys are better than him. When Coach announces that he can only take twenty-four players...
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...ambulance, the Reardan players get into a shoving match with the Wellpinit players—and fans—and the white referees, afraid of the Indians, begin calling fouls in Wellpinit’s favor. Wellpinit ends up winning...
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Chapter 22 - Red Versus White
To make clear that he hasn’t fallen in love with white people and still sees good in Indians, Junior compares his family to the families of...
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Chapter 24 - Valentine Heart
...and drops his textbook, leading the rest of the class to do the same. The white students then walk out—leaving Junior alone with Mrs. Jeremy. Junior laughs at the absurdity of...
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Chapter 25 - In Like a Lion
...the game. The crowd is amazed—Junior’s mom faints, and his dad hugs and kisses the white guy next to him even though they don’t know each other.
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Chapter 27 - Because Russian Guys Are Not Always Geniuses
Junior decides that the biggest difference between Indians and white people is the number of deaths they experience; he’s been to forty-two funerals in his...
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Chapter 29 - Talking About Turtles
Junior spends the first part of summer reading comics and missing his white friends—Penelope, whom he’s written three love letters although she hasn’t written one in return yet;...
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