Adversity In Three Day Road

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. Elijah starts to follow misguided advice from other people which hinders his ability to cope with adversity. Elijah

Even for most soldiers they would be quite uncomfortable killing a human, but Elijah does not even think twice about what he has just done. He even tries to justify that his actions were right and it had to be done. Guilt is no longer a part of Elijah and it is seen when he feels no remorse for killing an innocent child. Elijah possessing no guilt adds on to his ineffective way of coping with his adversities. Elijah disregards human lives by treating humans as a motivation for his own satisfaction which results in mental instability. This is seen when the squadron was short on food and Xavier asks Elijah if he is hungry. Elijah responds by saying, “I have found the one thing I am truly talented at and that is killing men. I do not need food when I have this.” (Boyden, 320). This quote signifies that Elijah views killing men as a sport rather than an assigned job. During the food shortage, he starts to live off the feeling he gets from killing people. This results in Elijah becoming mentally unstable which further hinders him from coping with his adversities effectively. Elijah choses to forget about his culture which results in a loss of humane beliefs. This is seen when Elijah and Xavier are going to push into No man’s land as they were putting charcoal on their face. “Elijah and I sit together, away from the others, and charcoal our faces. It’s our ritual. It’s what I call wemistikoshiw smudging ceremony. Elijah laughs at me. No Indian religion for him. The only Indian Elijah wants to be is the Indian that knows how to hunt and hide.” (Boyden, 137). This shows that Elijah doesn’t believe in the Cree culture and doesn’t practice their beliefs. The loss of humane beliefs impacts him in a negative way because he can’t differentiate between right and wrong. In Cree culture, there is a strict rule that you can’t take the lives of others for one’s satisfaction. However, this