Native American Literature - Essay Example

? Introduction In Three Day Road, two Indian boys end up in World War I. The novel shows that death is different to the Indians and the Canadians, and by Canadians, one means “Westerners.” The difference is illustrated in the outlooks of three different characters – Elijah, who is an Indian raised Westerner; Niska, who is an Indian who was never schooled in the Western ways; and Xavier, who was an Indian raised Indian, and did not get a “taste” for death until he was exposed to the Westerners through war. Specifically, the novel implies that, for the Indians, death is much more sacred and meaningful, and therefore gratuitous killing is wrong. For the Westerners, this is not necessarily true, although, as the novel takes place during war, perhaps this is unfair. Nevertheless, there are three perspectives of death, and each perspective comes from a character that has a very specific background – Niska sees death as something that should only come out of great necessity, although she does cause the death of a man who had hurt her; Xavier, too, sees death as something that should only come at great necessity, although his perspective changes somewhat in the throes of war. And Elijah sees death as nothing but a fun game. In fact, Elijah, if he survived the war, would probably have been a serial killer, he found death that much fun. Thus, the point of the novel is to show how three different characters approach death, with the clear message that Indians revere life and respect death, and Westerners do not. Discussion When we meet Elijah, he is clearly different from his friend, Xavier. They are both hunting, and they catch a marten, who is still alive. They must club the animal to death. Xavier “feels sick.” Elijah, on the other hand, does not seem any worse for the wear, as he immediately talks about how the two are best friends and hunters, as if the death of the animal in such a brutal way did not phase him at all. The next time that we see Elijah facing death is the passage in which there is a soldier who is, literally, half a man, as his entire legs and everything below the waist had been blown off, leaving just his intestines to dangle out of his torso. Elijah does not really seemed phased by this, either. Another passage describes faces that Xavier and Elijah had encountered with empty eye sockets and “lips…pulled back from their open mouths so that they look like they’re screaming” (Boyden, 2005, p. 64). While Xavier is rightfully repulsed by these faces, Elijah is unaffected by them – “Xavier, see those faces there….they look alive” (Boyden, 2005, p. 64). Thompson, who was a corporal above the boys, asks Elijah if he likes killing, in an indirect way, and Elijah states that it is in his blood. Moreover, there is indication, early on, before Elijah actually kills anyone, that serious matters are a game to him. This is a term that gets used quite a bit in describing Elijah – the word “game.” Not only is death and killing a game, but so is addiction. This is evident when Xavier talks about Elijah’s fascination with Grey Eyes, who is a morphine addict. Xavier knows that Grey Eyes is bad news, and wants Elijah to stay away from him. Elijah refuses because “this is all like a game to him” (Boyden, 2005, p. 60). Elijah further shows his vision of killing and war as being a game when he urged Xavier to picture the men with antlers on their heads, since Xavier was clearly not taking to killing in the same way that Elijah was. And, since the killing and war was merely a game to him, it was also merely a source of excitement for him. This is evident when the platoon gets a small break in the action for a few days. While Xavier is clearly looking forward to this respite, Elijah complains that he would “miss the excitement” (Boyden, 2005, p. 77). Then, when Elijah gets his first kill, there is not a hint of remorse. This occurs after Thompson teachers Elijah and Xavier the art of the sniper. Elijah hits a young soldier right away. It is clear that Xavier has mixed emotions about this – “the image of the soldier’s head exploding makes my stomach churn. I retch a little and spit up bile from my empty stomach, my throat burning and the acrid smell of my own insides making me retch a bit more” (Boyden, 2005, p. 81). Yet Elijah is not affected at all, but, rather excited. This proves to be only the beginning for Elijah. Soon, he is sniping many. He even leaves the unit to do independent sniping, and he would be court-martialed for this is the higher-ups became aware of it. Elijah never seems to care, and, in fact, he is celebrated for his killing skills. The men in his unit get handshakes and offers of cigarettes because of Elijah’s skills, which shows that his killing is celebrated. There are other passages where Elijah is killing men, and it is evident to Elijah that he really didn’t care – such as the passage where he and Xavier killed dozens of men in a trench, and all Elijah could say was that they should have brought a lighter machine gun. Elijah, towards the end of the book, confirms Xavier's worst fears about him – that Elijah was addicted to killing men, much like he was addicted to morphine. As Elijah put it “I have found the one thing I am truly talented at, and that is killing men” (Boyden, 2005, p. 296). This is a confirmation of what Elijah had become, and Xavier knew that he was dangerous at this point, and even before. Elijah further shows that he is not affected by war and by all the killing in his insouciant way that he approaches everybody and everything. For instance, Elijah affects an English accent, tells lots of jokes and loves to tell stories about killing men, even early on. Elijah seems to be the life of the party, and, while there is a certain virtue in gallows humor, in that it brings some break into a very grim situation, Elijah takes this to the extreme. Nothing seems to faze him, and everything is a joke. Even burial of the dead is not a big deal to Elijah, as he volunteers for this job and states that it wasn’t difficult because they were burying the bodies in soft muck. He entertains his unit with tales of his killing “he tells of how the creeping barrage nearly caused himt o soil his pants, how the shells landed so close he could taste the Canadian-made metal in his mouth, how he cursed his own artillery for being so accurate. The men around him laugh” (Boyden, 1005, p. 224). There are also countless examples in the book where Elijah makes light of killing – such as when he killed an officer with Xavier around, and starts to laugh. Elijah further showed that serious matters are all a game with his actions regarding Xavier and Lisette. Lisette was a local girl whom Xavier met and fell in love with. She was also a whore. Nevertheless, Elijah “bought” the girl for Xavier, unbeknownst to Xavier, who thought that Lisette actually liked him. He finds out differently when he went absent without leave, with an offense punishable by death, to go and see her. When Xavier arrived to see Lisette, she was with another man, probably another client. Xavier was devastated, and almost became a deserter because of this incidence. If he would have become a deserter, then he could have been shot by the firing squad. Elijah couldn't understand all of this, figuring that Xavier should have known that Lisette was a whore - “”I see...you went to find that girl, didn't you. I could have saved you the trouble and told you she was a whore, but you would not have listened” (Boyden, 2005, p. 234). Thus, Elijah's constant habit of not taking anything seriously almost cost his friend his life. If Elijah would have told Xavier the truth, or, even better, not bought the girl behind Xavier's back, then Xavier would never have left to find her and he would have never had his life endangered by his almost-desertion. Elijah also showed that he really didn’t have any reverence for his own life. This is shown by his habits – he is addicted to morphine and severely constipated. Moreover, he doesn’t eat. He is therefore killing himself with his addictions and his inability to eliminate or eat, yet there is never an indication that Elijah sees any of that as being a problem. Or, maybe it was a problem and Elijah knew this, yet he continued to do it. Alternatively, one could argue that the morphine addiction perhaps caused Elijah's other problems – the callous way that he approached life and death, and his inability to take anything seriously. There seems to be a coincidence between Elijah's addiction to morphine - and morphine was a “part of his every waking moment” - and his really callous period where everything was a game and death was not taken seriously. It is difficult to tell, as Elijah did not get to tell his own story. Only Niska and Xavier have this privilege. Perhaps if Elijah told his story, it would become clear that the morphine addiction caused his later callous attitude. Elijah finally gets to the point where Xavier knows that he is mad, and is essentially beyond repair. This is the point where Elijah is killing women and children, and murdering people from his own unit because they found out about his atrocities that he was committing on the field, as well as his morphine habit. The atrocities that Elijah commits includes taking the scalps of the people that he killed. Yet, Elijah continues to cover up his own madness with his insouciant attitude, which both is a sign that he is truly mad, as he apparently does not know nor think about what he is doing, and is also another sign that Elijah feels that death is a game. As Xavier puts it - “I remember him learning to love killing rather than simply killing to survive. Even when he went so far into that other place that I worried for him constantly, he still loved to tell me stories. He never lost his ability to talk. I think that it was this ability that fooled the others around us into believing he hadn't gone mad. But I knew” (Boyden, 2005, p. 249). Niska, on the other hand, showed that she had a reverence for life. She tells about her tribe killing a bear, which was controversial, as the bear was considered to be the brother to the tribe, and the bear was supposed to be hibernating. The implication was that the tribe was not to disturb the sleep of their brother. However, the tribe was starving, so they did eat the bear. That said, they showed a great respect and reverence for the bear – “we were always careful not to waste for fear of insulting an animal” (Boyden, 2005, p. 36). Then, Niska learned about death in another way, when Micah, an Indian in the tribe, went off on his own to find food for his wife and child. When Micah died, his wife chopped him up and attempted to pass his body off for fresh game. However, the tribesmen knew what she had done, and because people who are cannibals (windigo)are supposed to be crazy and will grow 20 feet tall, the tribe felt that they had no choice but to kill the woman and the child, and this is what occurred. It was Niska’s father who had to do the deed, and he went to jail for this. This is somewhat ironic, in view of all of what happens in the novel during the war, where there is gratuitous death all the way through the later passages – the father kills two people, and he is put into jail. Elijah kills many men, and he is hailed as a hero. One could say that both killed out of necessity, for Michah’s wife was crazy, but only the one who killed Micah’s wife is punished. Yet Niska was responsible for the death of her Frenchman, when she summoned the spirits of her animal friends and dispatched them to kill the Frenchman. The spirits did so by tormenting the man so that he leaped to his death. This was uncharacteristic of her, however, as there was never an indication throughout the novel that she was anything but reverent with life and death. And, it was also clear that she felt very guilty about this happening “And I asked the lynx a favor that would change me forever. I asked him to go out and the find the source of hurt and extinguish it” (Boyden, 2005, p. 163). It is clear in this passage that her request to the lynx was not taken lightly, and it was not something that she did not feel guilty about. She said that the request changed her forever, so this denotes that she was still tormented by this deed. Niska also has to kill windigo, which seems to the Indian word for cannibal, just as her father did. However, unlike Elijah, it is clear that this is a task that is most unpleasant, and Niska takes no pleasure in it at all. Yet Niska’s reverence for life, even animal life, is contrasted by the Westerners view of what she does. To them, Niska is only a purveyor of fur, and they did not have any regard for the animals that gave their lives for the fur. This is evident in the passages where Niska is bringing fur for trade, and the procter did not give her any money for them, only food (Boyden, 2005, p. 84). The Westerners who ran the parochial school where the Niska was confined for a short while, before her mother took her back to the wild in an effort to save her, also show little reverence for life, in that they were portrayed as abusive - making the children eat off the floor like dogs, switching them for minor transgressions and washing their mouths out with soap. The Westerners callous view of animals, in contrast to both Niska and Xavier, and even Elijah, is further illustrated in the incidence with the horses on the ship. In this incidence, there were injured horses below the deck of the ship that carried Xavier and Elijah to Germany. These horses were clearly terrified and pain, and scaring the other horses. Yet the officials on the ship refused to do anything about this situation until it was too late – Xavier took it upon himself to kill the animals and put them out of their misery. Thus, the Westerners in the book did not show the reverence for life that the Indians did. What is striking about this incidence is that Elijah was concerned about the horses' welfare at this time. This can mean one of two things – either Elijah was not always callous about life and death, and the war brought out the worst in him, or Elijah had a respect for animal suffering and life that he did not have for humans. Either way, Elijah showed concern for the suffering animals, and the other Westerners on board the ship did not. Xavier shows the same reverence for life as Niska does. For Xavier, war is literally hell. He comes back from the war, to stay with his aunt, a broken man. He describes the killing fields, with a great deal of anger. For instance, he told the aunt about the flowers that grow up where the bodies were, and this was a recurring theme in that this motif was used in different places throughout the novel- the beauty of the red flowers growing in a place of death. Xavier feels that the flowers were useless, because they were the only signs of life in the field. Xavier always feels guilty, and the reader gets the sense that this is merely a job for him to do. In fact, there is many indications that Xavier wants out of the war. He thinks about deserting when he finds out the lady that he fell in love with was actually a whore, and this is just one of the times that Xavier expresses a desire to leave the war behind him. He also knows that the war has changed him, irrevocably, for he divides his life into threes – before the war, during the war and after the war. He knows that who he was before the war was completely different then who he was during the war, and he also knows that who he will be after the war will also be completely different. All the death and destruction change him, where it never did change Elijah. Xavier and Elijah also had the same problems with self-destruction, specifically a morphine addiction. There is some indication that Xavier's addiction began only after he had to have his leg amputated, and Xavier was given morphine for the pain. Nevertheless, unlike Elijah, Xavier apparently was able to kick his morphine addiction in the future. This is evident by the fact that the Niska saw, in the future, that there were two young Indian boys and a person watching over them. Niska surmised that these two young boys were Xavier's boys in the future - “They are two boys, naked, their brown backs to me as they throw little stones into the water. But this isn't the past. It's what's still to come...I am not able to see the one who keeps his eye on them, and do not want to see. I know who he is, and who these boys are” (Boyden, 2005, p. 350). Because Xavier knows that Elijah had become somebody dangerous, in that Elijah had gotten to the point where killing was nothing but a high to him, Xavier knew that Elijah could not survive the war. If Elijah did survive the war, he would have a need to keep killing - “Elijah crossed the line, crossed it long ago. He won't stop. Is it up to me to stop him?” (Boyden, 2005, p. 320). This was evident when Elijah told Xavier that Xavier must savor his time in the war, because that would be the only time that they would have a license to kill. This implies that Elijah was savoring the war for this reason, and Xavier knew that Elijah would be dangerous to a civilized society. This is the reason why Xavier knew that he had to kill Elijah, and this is what he did. One might argue that this action that Xavier took against his friend shows that Xavier is more comfortable with death then he leads on, but this interpretation is short-sighted. Rather, it was Xavier’s reverence for life, and his recognition that Elijah had become a killing monster, that led to this ultimate decision. Conclusion One might say that the overall theme that the Westerner does not revere life in the same way that the Indian does is the fact that the war that the boys participate in is a Western war. World War I, in retrospect, does not make a lot of sense and it is difficult to discern exactly what it accomplished. Yet its toll was great, and Elijah was correct in one thing, and this was the only time that he seemed to be self-aware – he stated that he was receiving mixed messages when he was celebrated for his killing, because killing is supposed to be wrong. It is evident that Elijah realizes this when he says “What's mad is them putting us in trenches to begin with. The madness is to tell us to kill and award those of us who do it well” (Boyden, 2005, p. 322). Yet, in this world, killing was not wrong, it was right and it was something that encouraged other men to buy Elijah drinks and earned “Elijah” a medal. The name “Elijah” is in quotation marks, because the person who actually earned the medal was Xavier, as he was mistaken for Elijah at the end of the book. So, really, the question becomes – did Elijah become a killing machine because he liked to kill, or because he got recognition and praise for it, and this was something that he craved? Either way, Elijah and Xavier were both put into a situation where killing was revered. One made it out of the situation, and one did not. The argument is that Xavier's background, his reverence for life that he learned from Niska, made the difference between the two men. Xavier was a true Indian, and Elijah, while being of Indian heritage was not. This is what doomed Elijah and enabled Xavier to ultimately become a survivor. Read More