Informative synthesis
English 200
Dr. Tereza M. Szeghi
Informative synthesis
March 14, 2015
Yujie Chen

Poverty influences
Poverty is one of the main problem in the world, either developed country or developing country. Poverty both influence developed country, America and developing country, Mexico. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian and The Devil’s Highway, they both facing the poverty issue. Sherman Alexie is telling us about the Indian American living in a hard life and Luis Alberto Urrea is telling us about the poor Mexican people migrating to United States for gaining wealth. Both of the two stories meets the same problem which is poverty forcing them to make change. The path to success are tough and hard, both of them have to discard something for the cost. However, their ending are not the same.
Sherman Alexie is telling us the real life of Indian American who still lives in the Indian reservation. For those people, their poverty are generational and inheritance. “Seriously, I know my mother and father had their dreams when they were kids. They dreamed about being something other than poor, but they never got the chance to be anything because nobody paid attention to their dreams” (Sherman Alexie 12). As Arnold talks about his parents living in poor, he is helpless and feeling despairing because he knew that the poverty has been an issue for the Indian American for many generations. To think about more deeply, another view of what Arnold says is, he still believe that Indian people are equal to other ones. Not only they have the equal rights to have dream, but also they do have same potential to achieve success.
The poverty in the Indian reservation do gives Arnold despair and hopelessness, but it still can be seen as a motivator to stimulate Arnold to make change. “It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you're poor because you're stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you're stupid and ugly because you're Indian. And because you're Indian you start believing you're destined to be poor. It's an ugly circle and there’s nothing you can do about it.” (Sherman Alexie 13). After complaining about the poverty of being an Indian, Arnold starts to decide to change his life to not being the same with other Indian people. He decided to leave his Indian reservation and go outside to another non Indian school to study. We can learn from this that poverty is not only a horrible thing, it can still cheer people up and motivate people to make change.
Similarly, in the story The Devil’s Highway, it is talking about Mexicans cross the America border and cross the dead region in Arizona’s desert. One of the most important factor to make Mexicans migrant to America is poverty. Comparing to American, Mexicans are facing a huge poverty issue. “What we take for granted in the United States as being Mexican, to those from southern Mexico, is almost completely foreign. Rural Mexicans don’t have the spare money to drown their food in melted cheese. They don’t smother their food in mounds of sour cream. Who would pay for it? They have never seen “nachos”. In some regions of the south, they eat soup with bananas; some tribal folks not far from Veracruz eat termite tacos; turkey, when there are turkeys, is not filled with “stuffing”-but with dried pineapples, papaya, pecans” (Urrea 39). These are Mexican real life, they don’t have the same economic strength to the Americans. Therefore, some of the Mexicans started to decide to cross the border to America to achieve better life even though the road to America is so tough.
Comparing these two story, both Indian and Mexican are poor. Their poverty makes them living bad. Therefore, Arnold wants to leave the Indian reservation and Mexican wants to migrant to America. Their common target is to leave poor and achieve goodness. Although their original attention are familiar, their way to success are painful in different ways. “Rowdy is the toughest kid on the rez. He is long and lean and strong like a snake. His heart is as strong and mean as a snake, too. But he is my best human friend and he cares about me, so he would always tell me the truth.
And he is right. Nobody would miss me if I was gone.” (Sherman Alexie 32). Arnold has paid his best friend for leaving Indian reservation. On the other hand, it can be seen that Arnold has made up his mind to leave the reservation. It is clearly shows that Arnold has endured poverty so much. For the Mexicans, the blocks before migrant America are much more difficult than they expected.
By way of this letter, I ask forgiveness and pardon for what happed in the Arizona desert, because I really am sorry from the bottom of my heart for what happened and it honestly wasn’t my intention to lead those people to their deaths. Rather, my intention was to help them cross the border. But we never imagined the tragedy would happen. (Urrea 68)
From this situation it is clear to the audiences that the leader who can help Mexicans to cross the border is limited. He really don’t have the ability to help them across the desert. The tragedy has been written even before they decided to start. Both Arnold and Mexicans, when they start to change their life, they must lost something. However, even though they may lost best friend or even their life, they all begin their journey firmly because of the most horrible thing, poverty. In conclusion, although two stories are conveying same information to the audiences, people wants to defeat poverty. The result are totally different. At the first time, Arnold is struggling to adapt the new school because he think he will be bullied or discriminate, but at the end, he becoming integrate into the new environment. On the contrast, these Mexicans who are crossing the border do not have the same treatment as Arnold. Few of them can cross the border to reach the America and change their life.