It sucks to be poor because when someone you love gets sick you can't do anything about it. Junior's dog became sick in the hot weather. Their was nothing for him to do to save the dog. He had no money for a vet, no gas to drive a car to the vet, and no money for medicine to help him. All his family could do was relieve his suffering by shooting him with a bullet. Afterwards, he was depressed for a long time. "I thought about crawling into a hole" (15). Because of his poverty he lost a best friend and could do "nothing, nohting, nothing "(10) to save him.
Junior tells first hand about what poverty teaches you. He says that poverty only teaches you "how to be poor." (13) He feels an ugly circle where he feels he deserves to be poor because he is ugly and he is ugly because he is Indian and he is Indian because he is poor. "It's an ugly circle" (13). But poverty actually teaches people on how to be sad and desperation, two things that come from poverty. He hopes to escape poverty through art. But as junior said "We reservation Indians don't get to realize our dreams." (13). So he feels his only dream is to become rich or famous because of art but he doesn't believe anyone will pay any attention to it.
Why do you think it is bad to be poor? Do you think poverty teaches you anything else? Do you think he should be this down on himself for being poor? Have you ever felt true sadness like Junior has?
Personally, I really don't think he should be this hard on himself, just for being poor. After all, it isn't his fault. One life lesson that you should learn from being poor is that you can't just let life stomp on you. It just means that you have to work even harder to get to where you want to be in life. Instead of being down on himself, he should be thinking about the root of the problem. If you think about it's not even him that's poor. He is poor by association, so to change his life, he will probably have to change the way he thinks of himself first. Not poor, just... a few more challenges to overcome than other people. Anyway, thanks for reading, and sorry if I rambled.
ReplyDeleteAlso, one other question I may ask, if I can impose, is where do you think the stereotypical "circle" came from. It obviously got into his head somehow...
ReplyDeleteI agree with Dylan, Junior was really hard on himself, and he shouldn't have been. As he says on page eleven, "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" (11). His dog died because of that reason, but it's not like they couldn't afford it because they "gambled away their fortunes" (11), they were born that way. After his dog died, Junior went into a deep depression, so sad, so mad, so hard on himself that he let his dog die, that he wanted to run away. Thankfully Rowdy talked him out of it. But because of poverty, his best friend is dead. Poverty makes your life miserable, it can make you want to "crawl into a hole and disappear forever" (15), but in Junior's case, he shouldn't be that hard on himself because, well, it wasn't his fault. How would you act in a situation like Junior's? What would you do, feel, and be like if you watched you best friend die, with nothing that you could have done about it?
ReplyDeleteI believe that poverty doesn't teach you how to be poor. You teach yourself that. Poverty doesn't mean being poor, it means having to work harder to accomplish things, but after you are successful it pays off. So, I don't think that Junior should be down because he is poor, I mean he didn't do anything to make himself be poor. He was born and raised into it, so he can't be blamed for his poverty. But, what he can do is be optimistic and look at it the good way which is you are more respectful of what you have and you don't get spoiled.I believe that the stereotypical "circle" came from being surrounded by bad role models. A question to think about is, "Why do you think Junior is looking at the bad way of poverty instead of the optimistic side of it?
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ReplyDeleteTo follow up on Dylan's question, I think that the stereotypical "circle" that he is reminded of everyday, probably began and the beginning of his life, and just continued to escalate. From the moment he returned back at the res from the hospital, he was probably judged. The people on the res probably did not know what to think of his disease, so they just made something up. The hardest time for him in this stereotypical world was probably when he had the surgery. When he was done and came back to the res, he would have looked completely different, most people would say that it was a negative change. Because of his physical appearance and behavior, he would be judged and picked on his entire life, just because he wasn't "normal". High school is going to be very difficult for him, because he is different, and high school, in many places, is not a great place to be unique, different or "strange".
ReplyDeleteI don't think that he should be down on himself so much. First, It's not going to help him with anything if all he thinks about is, there's nothing I can do, I'll never grow up to have money. He has to think positive and maybe he will have a chance of separating himself from the others and giving himself a shot at a better life. I think his drawing abilities could actually help to connect him to the "outside world" and help him get away from the misery that he is in and start a new life for himself and for Indians. Overall, being down on himself is just going to make things worse for him, so I think he should apply his abilities to his greatest and hope for the best.
ReplyDeleteTo answer Ava's question, I think that Junior is looking at poverty on the negative side because if you think of poverty, you think poor, and hunger. Poverty is generally associated with bad things, and if you're living in poverty, you're experiencing it, as well as all of those other things. Junior is a fourteen year old boy who wants things that he can't get so he looks at poverty on the negative side. There are too many bad things and too little good things when it comes to poverty. Another question that we should ask ourselves is what are the good sides of poverty? What can poverty teach you and help you with in the future?
ReplyDeleteI very much agree with Samiha. You want everything until you have it. Junior is in this situation: he doesn't know what it's like to be middle class, so that's all he wants. I think we can all see where he's coming from though.
DeleteI agree with Samiha and Ava, poverty is relative. Junior is an extreme case of poverty, but it's all about how you look at it. If you spend your entire life looking at what your life is missing you will never notice what you have. To answer Samiha's question I believe that poverty teaches you to be resourceful and appreciate the little things. "Being hungry makes food taste better" (8). This is one of the small ways that being poor helps you to appreciate the little things in life. The question I want to know is whether or not you believe that poverty teaches you things that you could get from no other experience?
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, poverty teaches you how to make the best of life and no matter how bad things get, they can always get better. For example, Junior, even though his teacher comes to school in his pajamas sometimes, tries to enjoy school and is eager to learn. He is making the best of his life up until he relizes that he is using the same book his mom did when she was in high-school. As soon as Junior finds this out, he is down on his tribe and how poor they are. In addition, Junior makes his life better by hanging out with his friend Rowdy and by drawing. As bad as things may get for him, he always draws a cartoon about it to make himself feel better.
DeleteI think being poor teaches you about gratitude, junior doesn't see that because he has never experienced what it is like not being poor. The less you have in life, the more you appreciate what you do have.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, it published before I was finished let me continue...
ReplyDeleteJunior will eventually realize that poverty actually exposes you to a new world, there are people out there that don't know how bad the world is, they have yet to learn. Being poor, however, gives you the advantage of knowing that the world can be tough and you have got to watch your back. In my opinion, poor people have to work harder to get what they want because they can't just buy their way out of sticky situations.