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Themes In Three Day Road

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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 …show more content…

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

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Indigenous Identity Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road is a story of two friends, Xavier Bird and Elijah Weesegeechak, who volunteer to join the Canadian army and fight in the First World War. Both of them are Cree aboriginals from northern Ontario. Even though Xavier has a different personality from Elijah, they become best friends. Xavier is a shy person who is proud of his Cree identity while Elijah is more assimilated into the white Canadian society because he spends most of his childhood in Christian school. The story is told from a male perspective, Xavier, and a female perspective her aunt, Niska.

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War lights the barrel keg within everyone reveling their true identity, by abandoning their past beliefs. Joseph Boyden illustrates the importance of cultural identity, throughout the novel Three Day Road. Xavier shows devotion towards his culture, by constantly trying to hold onto whatever reminded himself of it. Another character, Niska, betrays herself by abandoning her culture as a result of losing her identity. Elijah also completely strips of his cultural identity when he turns windgo.

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Through centuries of great wars and battles, history has displayed brave men and women who have fought for their countries. These audacious people have helped propel countries for the greater good. However, the weight and responsibility, of the war, takes a heavy toll on soldiers that is often overlooked. Tim O’Brien, author of the novel The Things They Carried, records his stories, and the stories of his fellow soldiers during the war. However, three of these soldiers are affected in an outlandish way.

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The setting of the first World War was significant because it put the two main characters, Elijah and Xavier, in a situation where they constantly got discredited and faced brutal racism. The setting also represented a dark mood and also made it possible to clearly identify when different characters were speaking and sharing their point of views. The dark mood also shows the gruesome truth and reality of the World War in great detail. Giving the readers an insight of the characters thoughts during a war also proved how such traumatic events drove people insane and changed their lives forever.

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When talking about war, there are many books with few answers to what war truly is. Barbara Ehrenreich brings forth not only the possibilities towards understanding war but also the passion people from history have had towards it. One key issue she brings to light is humanities love for war, so much so that people would use excuses like holy wars to justify their need to fight in a war. She declares that war is as muddled as the issue of diseases and where diseases came from around 200 years ago. More so than that she even goes further on to state that these rituals that date back to prehistoric times are the cause of human nature during times of war rather than human instinct.

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War. It divides to conquer? Ending in triumph, or does it leave us broken? Who’s to say, it can do both. It all depends on the war itself.

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In the past, the ultimate outcome of war has been freedom and sovereignty, but along the way many casualties had to be made. Many wars in history have rewarded nations with liberation and freedom from tyranny. For example, the American Revolution provided America with independence from Britain and proved that they could prosper on their own. Although independence was gained, some say that the end result could have been attained without the fatalities and violence of war. They don’t believe the freedom was really worth the fight.

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Dealing with Adversity Throughout one’s life, adversity is inevitable. It presents itself unexpectedly in many forms; loneliness, despair, loss of a loved one, stress, and even in the actions of others. In the novel “Three Day Road” by Joseph Boyden, Elijah faces adversity after joining the war. However, the approaches Elijah takes to overcome the several hardships he faces makes him an undesirable model for coping with adversity. Elijah’s approaches are ineffective at coping with adversity because he follows misguided advice and becomes apathetic during war, resulting in major impacts on his life which lead to his downfall.

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War brings loss to both soldiers and civilians, which establishes many difficulties for people long after the war has passed. War is relative to the person experiencing it; a war that ends with a peace treaty for one could be a life long mental fight for another. Jobs, homes, and loved ones are subject to loss during times of war. As resources and goods are shipped overseas, people living on domestic home fronts suffer the backlash of the fighting. The ones who inevitably experience the most loss are the soldiers fighting within the war.

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