Arnold, the protagonist of the novel, is a 14-year-old Indian boy living
in a reservation who is bullied because of his weird and different physical appearance.
This boy was born with a disease in his brain and as a result he developed certain
physical characteristics that make him different from others. To begin with,
his skull was bigger than usual, it was enormous, he made jokes about that
saying that his head was so big that little Indian skulls orbited around it,
making reference to the sun and the planets; the kids called him Orbit or
Globe. Also, he had some problems with his eyes. As a result of the disease, it
left him nearsighted in one eye and farsighted in the other, so he had to wear
ugly and lopsided glasses since he was a child, looking as a three-year-old
Indian grandpa. We can also mention that he ended up having forty-two teeth,
ten more than usual, and his mouth was so crowded that he could barely close
it. Besides that, he mentioned he was too skinny that he would turn sideways
and disappear, but his hands and feet were huge so he looked like a capital
“L”. But it should be
mentioned that everything is due to brain damage caused by his disease. He was
born with the hydrocephalus which is a condition of having too much cerebral
spinal fluid inside his skull causing a lot of damage in his brain. When he was
only six months old, he was supposed to croak during the surgery and live the
rest of his life as a vegetable buy fortunately, he survived. Also, he suffered
seizures at least twice a week and that was worse for his condition since his
brain was being damaged more and more each time that he had seizures. Comparing his health with another character of the novel, Arnold´s could seem worse, but his best friend Rowdy had mental health problems, even if in the novel doesn´t mention it specifically we can see that he is physically agressive. Junior mentioned that Rowdy is the toughest kid on the rez and all the other kids are afraid of him but that is understandable since he was just a kid dealing with his abusive, alcoholic father. So, being tough is the way he found to protect himself, his constant anger and abusive family cause him to get into fistfights frequently. Even though Rowdy is very aggressive with the whole world, Junior considered him his best friend because Rowdy accepted him with all his imperfections and knew all his strengths.
One of them is that Arnold is an artist, he is a cartoonist and he knew
he was good at it. He's super-talented, but, more than that, he's unstoppable.
Arnold has enthusiasm and lust for knowledge and those characteristics were
very valuable in a place where none allows themselves to keep dreaming. He
loved drawing and he had his own philosophy about it, he drew because he said words are too limited and
unpredictable and if you speak only one language, people who speak another
language may not understand you but if you draw everyone can understand it; there
is no limit in drawings. Also, we can mention that Arnold is a fighter. Arnold has
hope, and he didn´t give up even though there were major forces conspiring
against him. In fact, he's so much of a fighter that he throws his textbook in
his geometry teacher's face. He was very brave to leave the reservation to have
a better future even when everyone saw him as a traitor, even when everyone in
Reardan was very different from him. But that was not an obstacle for him since
not losing hope was the most important for him at the end. But as everyone,
Arnold also had weaknesses and one of them is that Arnold is a scapegoat. Every
society has someone they pick on or blame things on. We see Arnold playing that
role on the reservation quite a bit like when the two basketball teams face off
against each other. We also see some scapegoating going on when Rowdy blames
Arnold for Mary's death. As we have seen, Arnold´s life was not easy since he
had lot of difficulties of any type but he is a clear example of persistence
and courage.
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