Overcoming Hardships In Joseph Boyden's Three Day Road

Many people face the harsh realities of life and with life comes problems and those problems can destroy or help a person. In Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road, Elijah struggles to overcome hardships due to racial discrimination and the brutality of the war. Ultimately, Elijah’s efforts to overcome hardships leads to his death. First, the obstacle of racial discrimination hampers Elijah from getting past problems. Elijah has to deal with constant racial comments of other others. During the Christmas break for the soldiers and they tell him to scalp like his ancestors: “He smiles at Elijah now. ‘Do what we do. Collect evidence of your kills. Do what my people taught your people a long time ago. Take the scalp of your enemy as proof. Take

In Boyden’s Three Day Road, Elijah becomes heavily reliant on morphine as a reliever, but it causes Elijah to be emotional destroyed. Elijah’s best friend Xavier starts to notice how morphine is eating his friend alive:

When he’s gone too long without the medicine, he tells me, he becomes fragile and headaches cause him is much pain that death seems a good alternative. When he does not take morphine, he is afraid of the world, and that is not a good feeling … But when the Golden Liquid is in his veins! Even at night the world is bathed in a soft light ... He becomes the hunter at these times, the invincible hunter who can lie still for hours, for days, only moving to refuel his body with the medicine, using his osprey’s vision to spot enemy. (212)

This shows how Elijah has become so, dependent on morphine that when he goes without it he feels like there is n meaning to his life anymore and the morphine helps him cover that. The killing and destruction of the war caused Elijah to be so hollow in the inside and destructed that the morphine which is a terrible anecdote helps him heal his problems but, allows Elijah to kill more because he has no