Theme Of Escapism In Richard Wagamese's Indian Horse

In Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse, Saul finds ways to cope with his surroundings which bring him solace in times of mental and emotional distress. To begin, Saul uses alcohol as a way to cope during difficult events in his life. Saul began bringing bottles home to his bunk and drinking throughout the day to keep his sobriety away. Eventually he had to give up alcohol in order to get in touch with his past. Next, Saul finds escapism in reading books. Though he finds comfort in books, each book is only temporary relief. Finally, Saul’s ultimate form of solace throughout the novel is playing hockey. Saul uses hockey to both mask his emotions and let them out. He escapes by getting lost in the game, but ends up losing his vision for the game.

Saul eventually turns to drinking himself, which allows him to find solace for short periods of time. For example, Saul drinks away his anger and feelings towards the discrimination he went through, and to the racism he endured while playing hockey with the Maboros in Toronto. Saul explains, “In alcohol, I found an antidote to exile”(180). This perception helps the reader to understand just how lonely he truly felt. In this example, Saul uses alcohol to temporarily feel less separate from the white population in the novel, who are nothing but discriminant towards him. Likewise, Saul uses the influence of alcohol to feel less when he is anxious and stressed. When Saul was going through this period of depression, he states, “The bleakness and me were old companions by then, and the only thing I knew how to do about it was drink”(186). The burden of anxiety that Saul was feeling made drinking feel as if it were an easy way to relieve the unfamiliar feelings that were surfacing because of events in the past, such as familial deaths or the relationship he had with Father Leboutillier. Undoubtedly, this is only temporary relief because Saul is only capable of finding true solace after he is sober and able to address his feelings surrounding his past. Therefore, Saul’s alcoholism is only a temporary form of

Reading becomes a constant throughout his life, and escaping into a book has always been Saul’s primary comfort zone. Saul taught himself to retreat into a book when his life was unfavourable. He confides to the reader, “Books had been my safe place all the time I’d been in the school and they still represented security…”(158). This mechanism too, is only temporary because Saul uses reading throughout the novel to escape into an imaginary world, yet inevitably will always have to come back to his life. Even as he aged, Saul still fell back into this way of coping to try to find solace. When he was getting acquainted with his lumbering job, Saul states, “When I came back from the bush I’d huddle in my bunk and read”(113). This imagery displays that no matter how often he reads, or how lost in a book he is, he always ends up back in reality trying to come to terms with his past. Therefore, reading only provides a temporary escapism for Saul as he searches for