Three Day Road and the Snaring of Innocence - Book Report/Review Example

November 15th, Three Day Road and the Snaring of Innocence. Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road is a novel about twoCree Indians who go to World War I, and how they change there and after their return home to their own land in Canada. The action of the novel jumps back and forth between Canada in the present, as Xavier’s relative Niska tries to help him recover from the horrors of war, and between World War I in Europe, where Xavier and Elijah experience those horrors first-hand. One of the most important chapters in the novel is “Tapakwewin,” or “Snaring.” In this chapter, we see Xavier and Elijah as they both change in different ways, and things that the various characters say in it illuminate many other parts of the novel. “Tapakwewin” is one of the World War I chapters, and it takes place in September in the area around Hill 70, near the village of Lens. The action in the chapter involves Xavier and Elijah sniping and their squad managing to take the hill from the German troops. This chapter also features the German flamethrower troops who symbolize quite well all the really horrible things about war. Mixed in with this action and horror are important character developments on the parts of Xavier and Elijah both. They also meet another Anishnabe soldier who helps to clearly define the role that Xavier’s and Elijah’s people play in the war, and how that defines who they are and the problems they have in the story itself. In relation to the other chapters of the novel, the reason that “Tapakwewin” seems central is that is really focuses on the characters of Elijah and Xavier, and how they are different and similar to one another, in a way that helps the reader to understand the novel’s central theme of loss during war-time. This theme is not only loss of life and health, as Xavier experiences, but loss of innocence and a loss of sanity. It also highlights another of the novel’s themes, which is the problems that Native Americans had and still have in integrating with the mainstream population while simultaneously maintaining their own unique traditions and cultures. The Elijah and Xavier featured in this chapter have both begun to change from who they were, and both seem to feel that they are on a course that can no longer be altered. Xavier shares Elijahs thoughts, revealing that he “wonders what is growing in him” (Boyden 262). “In the end,” he says, the answer is simple: “Elijah has learned to take pleasure in killing” (Boyden 262). This point, roughly 2/3 of the way through the novel, seems a pivotal one. In the time before it, although we suspect that Elijah is becoming something bad, we do not know for sure. After, as we watch his continued descent into killing and madness, we have no doubts. This chapter is the one that really makes this explicit for the first time. Likewise, we can see the part where Xaviers change solidifies, when Elijah relates that “something has hardened in [him] in the last months” and that he talks “even less than before, [does] not smile at all any more” (Boyden 262). As the characters of the two young men are what drive the novel, this point where they change beyond return is of great importance. Xaviers hardening, in fact, can be seen as a realization on his part of what he must eventually do to end Elijahs war madness: kill him. This realization is already there when Elijah kills Grey Eyes and Breech, and Xavier refuses to talk to him for a while. Elijah, too, admits he has become something horrible at this point, saying that he knows he has “done horrible things here” and that Xavier thinks he has “gone mad” (Boyden 316). However, both of these are foreshadowed by the interactions in the “Tapakwewin” chapter, in the tense interactions between the two characters. The interaction is significantly different from earlier in the novel, when Xavier and Elijah are a bit purer, not as ruined by the horrors of war. The “Onahaashiwew” chapter, for instance, describes Elijahs sniping as turning him into a different person, one who “is patient” and “becomes more watchful. He moves with no wasted movement, like a wolf on some smaller animals trail” (Boyden 104). This clearly is not the Elijah of “Tapakwewin,” who takes unnecessary risks such as walking calmly across sniper fire and beginning to “explore the places that arent safe to explore” (Boyden 247). Xavier is much different in this earlier chapter as well, he “blurts” things out and talks fairly often (Boyden 119). This particular earlier chapter also shows a great contrast to the two characters feelings about morphine. Elijah talks of the “one and only time [he] experienced the morphine” and foreshadows his descent into madness and addiction by saying that it could be “a very powerful tool for [him] in such a place as this” (Boyden 118). Xavier chides him and tells him not to take it any more, and he “nods and smiles” (Boyden 118). However, by the time of “Tapakwewin,” both characters have become more or less dependent on the drug, especially Elijah, who is able to inject it into his legs without even taking off his pants (Boyden 258). As can be seen when the “Tapakwewin” chapter is compared with others, loss and the horrors of war are two main themes of Three Day Road. More importantly, though, these themes are explored through the changes and problems of the two Cree Indians Xavier and Elijah. These changes are explored not only through them, but through how they resist—or don’t resist—integration with the dominant Western culture. Each of the two young men responds in different ways to the problems they face, and this is what makes the novel so realistic and so effective. The “Tapakwewin” chapter marks a pivotal point in the novel, where both characters are firmly set down the path of change that they decided upon earlier through their own personalities. In fact, this even seems hinted at in the title of the chapter, which means “Snaring.” Both characters have, at this point, become fully ensnared in the horrors of war. They will never be the same again. Works Cited Boyden, Joseph. Three Day Road. London: Penguin Books, Ltd., 2005. Print. Read More