Chanie's Life Before Dying: A Literary Analysis

This is a universe of imagination where fish can turn into birds, and fish surrender themselves to men - a world in which everything is interconnected within life or death. A 12 year-old naive ojibwe boy annihilated to death, Charlie(Chanie) Wenjack. He was an average indian boy who attempted to run away from the harsh conditions of the residential schools, and he was indeed successful but was slaughtered by the extreme weather conditions, causing his goal of reuniting with his family in the dark for ever. The novel’s style to embody the accidents that occurred is significantly inadequate, because the uses of spirits created confusion, critical details(such as uncle's name, and the name of the residential school) are excluded, and last but not

Firstly, the uncle’s name is never mentioned in the entire poem, “the uncle carries us writhing in our...the uncle brew bitter...tea(Boyden 36-53), causing one to wonder if the Uncle is important at all. Meanwhile on the other hand the name of uncle is specified in the article, “half mile to the cabin of Charles Kells,”(Adams 11), thus proving that the uncle played a significant role in the ‘real’ story. By doing so, this once again shows that the portrayal of Chanie is not clearly demonstrated in the novella. It is important to note that ‘Wenjack’, the novel about an Indian boy, does not declare to the reader just how the assassination of Charlie took place, “Chanie...and then with a shiver, a kick, he’s gone...Chanie lies...Chanie exposed”.(Boyden 93-95). Thus inducing the reader to doubt if the slaughter of Chanie is relevant to the plot. Unlike the novella, the article exactly stipulates what had caused the death of Charlie and how it occurred, “He probably spent hours, huddled behind rocks to escape the wind, gazing at the railroad tracks...Charlie must have fallen several times because bruises were found later on his shins...At 11:20 a.m.