The Three Day Road (ISP Post)

            My ISP book is Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden, which I have enjoyed reading so far! It explains World War 1 from a fresh and new perspective told through the eyes of two young Native Canadian boys, Elijah and Xavier. As a reader the story is eye opening to our own Canadian history and culture that I thought I knew so much of. Three Day Road is a historical fiction vividly told by Joseph Boyden. His writing seems so real that it feels like he has personal roots to the horrors of war. His descriptions of the Canadian landscape and the detail towards Aboriginal culture indicate possible heritage.

            It is easy to sympathize with Joseph Boyden’s view of the world through his writing. He reveals the ugly truth about residential schools, oppressive European cultures, war and drug addiction. Native children were striped away from their families and sent to residential schools to teach them how to live like Europeans, the correct way to live. The nuns who taught them treated Elijah and Xavier horribly. “The old Cree are heathen and anger God. They are backwards people.” (56) the nuns would say as they  force their own religious beliefs on the children.

            The migrating and greedy Europeans brought the tragic fall of the Native people. When they first came to Canada it was the Natives who helped the wemistikoshiw (the white people). The Natives taught them how to trap for furs the Europeans disparately wanted. In return the Europeans gave them rum, a sly and powerful weapon. More tricks were placed on “the generous Cree people and like forest ticks the wemistikoshiw grabbed on, growing fatter by the season, until the day came when suddenly it was the Cree who answered to them.” (48)

            War was another problem the wemistikoshiw created. They always seemed to disagree with each other for more greed and power. Boyden successfully strips the glory out of World War One and replaces it with all the hardships of the soldiers. Elijah and Xavier are constantly facing obstacles and shells whizzing past their heads. They are forced to share their trench “home” with rats, lice, and dead bodies. Xavier explains his sleeping arrangement as “slipping into a strange half-sleep lying below the Earth’s surface with the dead.” (70)

            Drug addiction is another evident problem within the novel. The soldiers are issued high amounts of morphine on the battlefields. It relieves the pain but also satisfies another need, a sanctuary away war. The high allows soldiers “to fly in a new way” (10) but once they come back down the men are taken prisoner of the drug. It’s difficult not to sympathize with the soldiers whose relief of pain always comes with serious consequences.

            I believe Boyden is looking for a reader who wants to know the ugly truth. He’s looking for someone who wants to know the whole story behind the glory and tragedy of World War One and Native Canadians. I think that I could be considered one of his ideal readers because I am very interested in the full story. Our worldviews and values are similar which is why Three Day Road is a good read for me.