Heba Bakr

Ms.Petito
Ela 1
12/21/21
Coming Of Age

When a person’s coming of age occurs, it is when they have transitioned from an
adolescent to a more mature, adult version of themselves. The experience that marked Junior’s
coming of age in “The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian” is all the grief he had to
endure. He had to endure his grandma’s, Eugene’s and Mary’s death. It affects him because he
lost three of the most important people in his life. He realizes that life is short. He then decides
to never drink because they all died alcohol related deaths. He realized most people on the rez
die because of alcohol whether they stay or leave the rez. Even Junior says “About 90 percent
of the deaths have been because of alcohol” (Alexie 200). This shows that alcohol is one of the
main causes of death for the Spokane Indians that live on the rez. Due to everything that
happened junior, he decides to never drink because it’s the number one cause of death. In the
text he says “I wept and wept and wept because I knew I was never going to drink, because I
was never going to kill myself and because I was going to have a better life out in the white
world”(Alexie 217). This explains why he never wants to drink and how upset he is about how
people drink themselves to the point of death. He didn’t want to kill himself like other Indians did.
Due to this he felt like an outsider since he didn’t want to follow the path of all the other Indians
and give in to drinking. After thinking about it he realized that he in fact wasn’t an outsider and
that he belonged to multiple tribes. In which he wouldn’t have realized without the deaths of his
family and friends. The deaths added onto his growth and caused him to open his eyes more
and take more caution in life because you only have one shot at life. Overall, the experience
that began Junior’s coming of age in “The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian” is the
deaths of his friends and family members.