We Beat Wellpinit Analysis

As Junior tries to rise above the life everyone expects him to live, he becomes a victim of interpellation through identification and cultural assimilation, as well as attitude and behavior reception. While the conditions of whiteness utilize poverty as a hegemonic tool, Junior’s transformation into a fully formed hegemonic subject was mainly the result of assimilation. In this paper I will argue why Junior’s assimilation is instrumental in understanding his position of poverty and how it relates to the transcending of such a position. First, the development of knowledge of a collective identity based exclusively on Reardan fosters Junior’s sense of insight of unity and purpose. As seen when Junior states, “We beat Wellpinit by forty points. Absolutely destroyed them.” (194) Junior identifies himself as a student who attends Reardan, who plays on the basketball team and not as a hopeless child on the reservation with the declaration of “we”. Junior’s insight of purpose was to defeat a part of himself (Wellpinit) in order to hope (Reardan). The loss of individual
Junior exhibited a different form of wealth when Reardan became an environment that began to lack the constant discrimination and prejudice he felt when he first started attending school there. This moment of self-awareness allowed him to see the inequality at the Reardan v. Wellpinit basketball game rematch after he won. Junior describes “I mean, jeez, all of the seniors on our team were going to college” and “I knew that none of them was going to college. Not one of them” (195). The image Junior narrates for the reader, depicts the systemic problem of poverty is a result of inequality. For a second, Junior was comfortable enough that he almost forgot the oppression but reality soon sets. In order for Junior to attain hope, he had to assimialte to the culture that benefitted off of the reservation’s