Summary Of Joseph Boyden's Three Day Road

The prescribed question that I have chosen is Power and Privilege: “How and why is a social group represented in a particular way?”

Over the course of E. Pauline Johnson’s life, which lasted from 1861 to 1913, the treatment and status of First Nations Canadians began to shift. While Pauline Johnson wasn’t as affected by the treatment and status of First Nations Canadians, due to her move off of the Six Nations Reservation because of her father’s death in 1884, she made gains for her people as she ascended to fame. Pauline Johnson made accomplishments for First Nations Canadians in her life and work, those included her poetry, acting, and lifestyle. Even after Johnson’s demise, her name and work lives on because of her talent and charisma.

The two most vital characters in the novel “Three Day Road” by Joseph Boyden is the Xavier Bird and Elijah Weesageechack and they have several major differences and these differences has been told and tested throughout the whole novel that how Xavier was reserved and visceral while Elijah was self-assured and talkative. Xavier was nurtured by his Aunt Niska for the long span of his childhood, opposed to how Elijah was raised in Moose Factory by nuns at a residential school. This came up as the three key differences between them that are paramount to the story and the themes of the novel are; firstly, their respect for their Oji-Cree culture, secondly their respect and love for human life, and lastly their personalities.

Writer Sherman Alexie has a knack of intertwining his own problematic biographical experience with his unique stories and no more than “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” demonstrates that. Alexie laced a story about an Indian man living in Spokane who reflects back on his struggles in life from a previous relationship, alcoholism, racism and even the isolation he’s dealt with by living off the reservation. Alexie has the ability to use symbolism throughout his tale by associating the title’s infamy of two different ethnic characters and interlinking it with the narrator experience between trying to fit into a more society apart from his own cultural background. However, within the words themselves, Alexie has created themes that surround despair around his character however he illuminates on resilience and alcoholism throughout this tale.

Joseph Boyden’s novel Three Day Road demonstrates how effective betrayal is at destroying our hopes and beliefs.

In Thomas King’s short story, “Borders”, he writes about the Canada-America border. Within the short story, the main character refuses to identify her citizenship even though she is from Blackfoot. Even though the story is being told through the young boy’s point of view, the main issue focuses on another character, the mother. When approached by guards on the border, the mother insists that she is a Blackfoot, which causes issues because her son is a minor and must stay on the Canadian side of the border.

Thomas King’s A Short History of Indians in Canada introduces the effects of colonialism and bias established on indigenous peoples’ reputation through satire. King’s play on major metaphors and animal depiction of indigenous people paints an image of an abhorrent and gruesome history. Through moments of humour, King makes references to racial profiling, stereotypes and mistreatment as historically true. Thomas King utilizes industrialization versus the natural world to incorporate the effects of colonialism and how representing indigenous people as birds made them the spectacle of the civilized world. The colonizer dominance and power imbalance is evident and demonstrated often in the short story through

Marcus Garvey said, “People without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.” For the citizens of Otter Lake, a fictional reserve set in Drew Hayden Taylor’s Novel Motorcycles and Sweetgrass, they are disconnected from their cultural roots. Much of the older generation is suffering psychologically from the effects of residential schools, where their culture was taken from them. The younger generations in return feel no ties to their past as they were raised by people who feelings towards it were conflicted as they spent years being abused and told that their culture was wrong. As an author, one of their main roles is to convey a message. Considering Drew Hayden Taylor is First Nation and of the

“The Way to Rainy Mountain” is organized very well, it includes three narrative voices. Throughout this novel the first narrative voice is about the Kiowa legends. Then Momaday has a paragraph of contexts that relates to the legend. The author gives the reader a bit of his life by relating a family experience he had. Because some of the Kiowa legends and history go with Momadays own family history, then this three voice narration allows the author to have great detail about the Kiowa’s way of life in every way.

Three Day Road written by Joseph Boyden, is a novel that follows the story of a young First Nations man fighting in the war, and a First Nations women living in the Canadian wilderness. The story of these two protagonists are told through each of their differing perspectives, making this novel one that is constantly transforming in order to portray important motifs and themes. Storytelling is one of the primary motifs that is seen throughout the course of this novel and is one of the methods that connects the two characters, even whilst they are apart. Boyden uses the complex motif of storytelling to aid in the depiction of several core themes in this novel. In Three Day Road, storytelling is often related to healing, hunger, and power. In turn, it becomes a type of coping mechanism for varying traumas and hardships that the characters experience.

Three Day Road is a novel by Joseph Boyden, first published in 2005. The story is set from Niska’s teenage days in the early 1870s to the pre-WWI years, the war itself and the immediate post-war time. It takes place in Northern Ontario and on the battlefields of France and Belgium. We follow two parallel narratives, Niska’s and Xavier’s. They are both Cree Indians. She is one of the last Canadian medicine women to live off the land. Niska is a proud, strong and independent character who does not give in during a time of cultural interference from the white people. Her two boys, Xavier and Elijah, have fought in the Great War and one of them has returned. Xavier is an invalid and addicted to the army’s morphine when he comes back to Canada.

Authors like Joseph Boyden teach readers about aboriginal culture, tradition and discrimination thorough a native perspective; this is shown through the book Three Day Road. Three Day Road is an award winning novel which shows the struggles many solders faced during WW1. This is exactly portrayed by the two main characters, Elijah and Xavier. Xavier is deeply rooted in his native culture and tradition. Whereas Elijah is more outgoing and likes taking risks as he begins to identify with the “white” culture. All of the challenges and ordeals they face lead them to alter their cultural identity so they would be seen as better solders, in order to overcome their obstacles they turn to addiction and under all the pressure they fall into a competition which affects their friendship and puts their lives at risk.

B: Australians are used to thinking that a journey is physical but they never think that the journey could be a spiritual one. In Jackie French’s 1993 novel, ‘Walking the Boundaries’ Martin, the main character, goes on a physical and spiritual journey where he learns about his family’s past and the importance of looking after the land.

Noel Pearson’s An Australian History For Us All and Margaret Atwood’s Spotty Handed Villainesses effectively explore the challenges faced when rectifying the consequences of the past on the present. This is achieved through the implementation of rhetorical techniques, including ethos, logos, and pathos, generating textual integrity. While Pearson uses the rhetorical triangle in order to shed light on the ramifications of past injustices towards Aboriginal Australians, Margaret Atwood employs it to showcase the complications derived from second wave feminism, and its impact on the portrayal of female characters in literature.

Despite the fact that all residential schools have closed, what thousands of aboriginal children experienced remain both terrifying to those who hear the stories and relevant to Canadian society. Glen and Lyna are two residential school survivors whose lives were greatly impacted by the government’s attempt to eliminate aboriginal culture. For example, “the system forcibly separated children from their families and “even siblings rarely interacted.” Consequently, the family ties between Glen and his family severely weakened through his years in residential school, making it difficult for him to find comfort in family even when he started his own. As a result, when Glen struggles with alcoholism, instead of confiding in family, he is driven