Rowdy was born mad. Reflections on anger in Alexie's "Diary of a Part-time Indian"

Sherman Alexie's narrator, Arnold Spirit, Jr., in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, tells us that his best friend Rowdy was "born mad." He writes,

He was always crying and screaming and kicking and punching. He bit his mother's breast when she tried to nurse him. He kept biting her, so she gave up and fed him formula. He really hasn't changed much since then. Well, at fourteen years old, it's not like he runs around biting women's breasts, but he does punch and kick and spit. He got into his first fistfight in kindergarten. He took on three first graders during a snowball fight because one of them had thrown a piece of ice. Rowdy punched them out pretty quickly. And then he punched the teacher who came to stop the fight. He didn't hurt the teacher, not at all, but man, let me tell you, that teacher was angry. "What's wrong with you?" he yelled. "Everything!" Rowdy yelled back."

I reflected on this description for a long time because it's so hard for me to understand.

I have been mad. Really mad. Raging, screaming, losing it-mad. My anger is not pretty. And it is not let loose very often.

However, I have never been in a fight. I have never used my fists to punch another person.

I have not ever, in my recollection, been in a physical altercation myself other than to try to stop a fight.

When I was a teacher, in Wylie, Texas, I did try my best to break up a fight between some young adults at my school. They started out in the boys' bathroom adjacent to my classroom's back wall. I heard them through the concrete, yelling and hitting. They moved next into the hallway: two young men beating on another boy. It was loud, and it was scary. I had to do something.

As a female teacher, especially in the South, I was not expected to do anything other than stand, hands on my hips, and yell for help. Right. Not when they are bleeding on the carpet right in front of my room.

I grabbed the smaller one and pushed him up against a locker. By then, another teacher or coach (I don't remember) came and got the bigger one. Two of the three were expelled. I went to the expulsion hearing. There were no parents in attendance, which in many ways was almost as scary to me as the fight itself.

I don't understand Rowdy's physical expression of his anger. But I am trying to understand his position. Alexie writes, "Rowdy fought everybody. He fought boys and girls. Men and women. He fought stray dogs. Hell, he fought the weather. He'd throw wild punches at rain. Honestly."

I need to review Junior's description of "THE UNOFFICIAL AND UNWRITTEN (but you better follow them or you're going to get beaten twice as hard) SPOKANE INDIAN RULES OF FISTICUFFS."

I need to remember that early in the book, Junior tells us that Rowdy's had a horrible summer: "His father is drinking hard and throwing hard punches, so Rowdy and his mother are always walking around with bruised and bloody faces."

I need to think about why a young man who is taught that violence is acceptable would use his fists to express his anger.

Thanks for listening.