Kentucky Fried Chicken

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

Colonel Sanders, Eat Your Heart Out

... especially because Junior can't eat his heart out. His family doesn't even have the cash necessary to eat regularly:

Okay, so now you know that I'm a cartoonist. And I think I'm pretty good at it, too. But no matter how good I am, my cartoons will never take the place of food or money. I wish I could draw a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or a fist full of twenty dollar bills, and perform some magic trick and make it real. But I can't do that. Nobody can do that, not even the hungriest magician in the world.

I wish I were magical, but I am really just a poor-ass reservation kid living with his poor-ass family on the poor-ass Spokane Indian Reservation. (2.1-2.2)

But if he could, he'd eat KFC three times a day. Chicken is really important to Arnold, since he's almost always hungry. Food—and money—is scarce on the reservation. While KFC might seem like fast food to some, the treat amounts to a holy experience for Arnold. Check out Arnold's drawing of the shroud of Kentucky Fried Chicken (figure 2.1).