Themes In Three Day Road

The Second Side of War

There are two sides to war, a physical war in order to survive, and an internal struggle to stay true to your heritage or to assimilate to achieve a higher social status. In Three Day Road Joseph Boyden shows the pressures to rise with in a social hierarchy versus maintaining cultural identity through the characters of Xavier and Elijah, he shows that assimilating leads to destruction and the preservation of traditions leads to survival and healing, illustrated through Elijah’s insanity, and Xavier’s recovery from the war.

The effect of war is a reoccurring theme in the novel; war consumes everything in its path, similar to the Windigo. In the Ojibwa legend of the Windigo, after being bestowed super natural powers by

Elijah is able to be accepted very early on, unlike Xavier, Elijah can speak fluent English. Breaking the language barrier Xavier never got past. In war the ability to kill is essential; Elijah used this to his advantage. “We’ve been in the trenches for only five months in their time, but Elijah’s killed five men for every month that has passed. He is Whiskey jack the Indian and Whiskey jack the killer” (Boyden, 154). This illustrates Elijah’s ability to not only be accepted but respected, creating a heroic, worshipful image for himself. This success is a double-edged sword, as eventually he can no longer relate to a sane person. This is shown when Elijah and Xavier were searching for stragglers in a building; Xavier discovers a scared mother and child and accidentally shoots the mother, when Elijah enters the room he shoots the child on sight, claiming he could not see, and thought Xavier was in danger, “I am trained not to hesitate in situations of danger” (306). He views his extremist methods as professionalism, he shows no empathy. In contrast, Xavier is sympathetic, viewing what happened as a horrible mistake. Because in native culture, you only kill to survive, murdering a defenceless mother is against Xavier’s native identity. Even though the child posed no danger to Elijah, he mercilessly shot the child anyway, he is not killing to survive, he is killing for sport. Like a