Three Day Road: Novel Analysis of Themes and Synopses

Possible themes for discussion:

(Note that this is not a comprehensive list. You are encouraged to suggest and explore other themes
that you pick up on)
x Good versus evil
x Killing degenerates the humanity in our
souls
x Modern verses tradition
x Death and renewal rebirth
x Power and inequality
x Redemption and reconciliation
x Gender inequity
x What is truth
x Prejudice
x Sexuality as symbolic for spiritual
x The falsehood of pride and assumption
journey/rebirth
x The sacrifices required by responsibility
x
Rites of passage
x Loss of culture is loss of identity
x Hunter versus killer
x Spiritual sincerity and discovery

Below are some reflections on themes discussed by other critics and authors:

What are the major themes in the novel Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden?
The character development of Elijah, (outgoing and boastful) and Xavier, (quiet and reserved) and the ways they
,<

The two young Cree started out with eagerness to fight in the war, having honed their tracking and shooting skills
in the bush killing animals for food and ceremony. Their very different characters emerge clearly as they leave the
familiar territory.

As they began their journey, their f
numerous challenges, such as the language barrier, their inexperience in urban and barrack life, the discrimination
facing them. As their talent as trackers and snipers are increasingly recognized by their superiors, despite their
prejudice against Indians, the two are sent on increasingly daring missions.

Their reputation grows as they take out more enemy snipers than anybody else. Xavier and Elijah respond very
differently to the pressure and violence. One hates his role on the killing fields and is retreating into himself; the
other is thriving on the experience and the attention he garners. Their friendship is seriously tested and the
tension between them reaches breaking point.

How can they salvage the friendship that they had? How can they survive in the hell of the trenches?
How do they cope with loosing their comrades and being wounded themselves?
Will they be able to reconcile the upbringing on the land, guided by Niska, with the brutality of their war
experiences?

Source: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090308083610AAQrUFg

Joseph Boyden captures the most evil of Ojibwa myths

What a rare and wonder:dZ/tt/
novel about two Ojibwa snipers named Xavier Bird and Elijah Whiskeyjack, and the windigo spectre that lurks in
the trenches where they fight. The story is told from the perspective of the maimed and morphine-addicted Xavier,
following his return from the battlefield. He is whisked away into the bush by his shaman aunt Niska, who struggles
to nurse him back to life and exorcise the gruesome memories that haunt his spirit.

One of the more powerful Ojibwa myths is the story of the windigo, an evil spirit that possesses anyone who
succumbs to cannibalism. For the Ojibwa, turning windigo was the ultimate transgression against nature. Boyden

Three Day Road: Novel Analysis of Themes and Synopses

captures that aura of madness. "Md

t
d grow into wild beasts 20 feet tall whose
hunger can be satisfied only by more human flesh and then the hunger turns worse. I listened to the adults of the
e. They
,
one another."

On every page of Three Day Road, the spirit and power of the windigo informs the journey of Xavier and Elijah.
Hunters from the bush, they are superbly skilled sharp shooters thrust into the trenches of France where
slaughtering and survival are synonymous.

Friends their entire lives, they are extremely gifted soldiers and brothers in arms except for the one thing that
divides them: the sensation that killing inspires.

Boyden, who is a tad Mtis, is reluctant to define himself as an aboriginal author. "I was raised in an Irish Catholic
//
coffee. But the son of Zttt//
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important to him that Three Day Road be authentic. "I wanted my native friends to be able to pick up the book and
/K

Regarding the myth of the windigo, Boyden points out how the carnage on the fields of France during WWI is a
manifestation of its presence in the world. The 38-year-old author credits the windigo as such an inspiring force
y
players in my next novel. But this time the theme of the windigo will be applied to the world of the contemporary


Source: http://hour.ca/2005/06/09/way-of-the-windigo/

Publishers Synopsis of the novel Three Day Road By Joseph Boyden

Three Day Road tells the story of a pair of James Bay Cree, Xavier and Elijah, who become famous snipers in the
Canadian Army during the First World War. And telling stories is also a large part of what it's all about. The
narrative is a tag-team performance. When Xavier returns home, missing a leg, addicted to morphine and
obviously dying, his Auntie Niska picks him up at the train station and together they begin a three-day canoe
journey home (meant to suggest the "three day road" of the title, which refers to death). Niska hopes to sustain
Xavier on the journey with stories of her own and Xavier's childhood. In turn, Xavier tells the story of what
happened on the Front and Elijah's descent into madness.

In other words it's imagined as an oral narrative. And this despite the fact that Niska doesn't always tell her story
out loud to Xavier, who is partly deaf and only occasionally conscious anyway, and Xavier doesn't talk much to
anyone. It is more like a pair of interior monologues presented as an act of story-telling. This is reflected in the
style, which is consistently flat and understated, a no-man's land of prose that shows and doesn't tell while
avoiding the use of words that are more than two syllables. At times this voice has a direct, primitive sort of
strength, especially when it's used to describe battlefield horrors. Burned "bodies melted and black" give off a
"smell sweet enough to make the stomach feel bad." At other times, however, Boyden falls back on the repetitive
verbal formulas and clichs that characterize oral story-telling. The writing becomes too simple for its own good,
sometimes seeming clumsy and affected. "That winter and the following summer and the winter and summer after
that were plentiful and very happy," Niska says. "But as always happens, the good times bled into harder times and
our third winter together proved long and difficult and very cold." Prose like this, and there is a lot of it, is as
numbing as Xavier's morphine. It also makes the slightest variation in language stand out. When Niska says "I was

Three Day Road: Novel Analysis of Themes and Synopses

appalled and mesmerized by what I was becoming" and Xavier "My body radiates pain" you get the feeling the
editors missed something. "Appalled," "mesmerized," and "radiates" are words we can't imagine these characters
using.

Three Day Road is a book destined for a spot in the CanLit canon. You feel it in the powerful historical narrative,
the strong yet taciturn central characters who have a special spiritual connection with nature, the emphasis on
close family relationships and the importance of home, and the curious objectivity and lack of verbal flair it is all
presented with. There's no denying its epic quality. Xavier and Elijah are less characters than giant archetypes, the
good and evil brothers or the children of nature destroyed by the sickness of civilization. Elijah's savagery is a both
a psychological fact and a case of demonic possession, the spirit of windigo set loose on the battlefield.

The inspiration for the story was the Ojibwa First World War hero Francis Pegahmagabow (who appears - or fails to
appear - as "Peggy" in this book). And yet Niska and Xavier remain distant, not fully realized figures. They
frequently travel outside their own point of view, either telling stories about events they don't participate in or
floating above it all in a transcendent visionary state. We have the sense that the story is telling them as much as
they are telling the story. Their lack of sophistication (we know the girl Xavier falls in love with is a prostitute
before he meets her), the foreknowledge we have of how things will turn out (because the novel is told in
flashbacks), the familiar historical background (Xavier and Elijah fight at Vimy and Passchendaele), and the brutal
predictability of most of the plot, adds up to a book with few surprises. But this also contributes to the elemental
power the book has. It's a war novel, but also a story about the workings of fate and the soul's struggle with
corruption.

Three Day Road is Joseph Boyden's first novel and at times the writing shows it. The strength of the story makes up
for any lack of polish though, and the result is a dramatic debut.

Source: http://www.goodreports.net/reviews/threedayroad.htm

Book Review Synopsis of Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden

The essence of Joseph Boyden's debut novel, Three Day Road, is captured with remarkable precision and brevity in
a single sentence 50 pages from the completion of the story. "We all fight on two fronts, the one facing the enemy,
the one facing what we do to the enemy." Everything else in this terrific book is an expansion on this central
notion.

For the past quarter-century, the definitive novel of the Canadian experience of the 1st World War has been
Timothy Findley's third book, the Governor General's Award-winning The Wars (1977). According to Findley's
Library & Archives of Canada biography, "he wrote the novel in guise of a researcher trying to reconstruct the story
of Robert Ross, a soldier of the Great War. The book explores many of the obsessions that colour all his writing:
violence, loneliness, a concern for animal rights, and the survival of the individual in a world of madness."

But Findley's revered novel now has a worthy challenger for the title of best fictional reflection of Canada's WWI
story in Three Day Road. Boyden has chosen to tell his tale of violence, loneliness and madness primarily from the
point of view of Xavier Bird, a Cree Indian from the Moose Factory, Ontario area. Bird and his childhood friend
Elijah Weesageechak (pronounced Whiskeyjack by the Wemistikoshiw, or English-speaking Canadians) decide to
leave the confines of their Northern Ontario existence behind them and join the Canadian army. But their search
for adventure takes them down diverging paths. This despite the fact that the pair remains together, in the same
Southern Ontario Rifles company, for the entirety of their military careers.

Elijah, confident in his use of English from his years at the residential school in Moose Factory, becomes a
decorated and renowned sniper while Xavier, easily Elijah's equal in terms of marksmanship, is rendered practically
invisible as a result of his poor mastery of English, his distaste for killing and his proximity to his more sociable
cohort. The friends are drawn together by their shared history and heritage and pushed apart by their differing

Three Day Road: Novel Analysis of Themes and Synopses

responses to the horrors of trench warfare. The reader witnesses how war can bore into the soldier's soul latching
on to some key aspect of his being and sharpening it, focusing it, until it defines him. Thus Elijah emerges as the
killer, addicted to the adrenaline rush of battle and the attention his exploits bring, while Xavier is the hunter who
kills simply to survive; silent, efficient, but pained by the excesses of his friend's bloodlust.

Boyden's ability to immerse the reader in the sights and sounds of the battlefield is quite extraordinary. "Big guns
have started up in the distance but they are miles away. It's as if the war has moved to another place. It has sucked
the life from Saint-Eloi and left it like this, has moved on in search of more bodies to try and fill its impossible
hunger." He paints extraordinarily vivid pictures from the limited palette of rain-cloud gray, sodden mud brown
and blood red. And Boyden makes the most of his descriptive skills by contrasting the battlefield sequences with a
second storyline, told in the first person by Xavier's aunt, Niska.

The greens of the forest, the pristine white of winter snow, the sounds of a canoe on water, and the moose, and
the night -- these dominate this portion of Three Day Road. Here the reader learns how Niska raises young Xavier
in the bush after rescuing him from the Moose Factory residential school. She teaches her nephew the ways of the
hunter and the healer, and Xavier in turn passes much of this on to his friend Elijah. Niska also brings the injured
Xavier home upon his return from the war, paddling him back into the bush while attempting to understand the
terrible changes that war has written on her nephew's body and mind, attempting to heal him with stories of his
youth.

In addition to his three central characters, Boyden has stocked Three Day Road with a wonderful assortment of
secondary players. Sean Patrick, Gilberto, Fat, Thompson, Sgt. McCaan and Lt. "Bastard" Breech are among the
men who head off to France along with Xavier and Elijah. To Boyden's credit, none of these characters is treated as
simple cannon fodder, though many of them are killed in battle as the Canadians help turn the war's tide against
the German army. And Boyden, cleverly, does not simply replace his soldiers as they fall. Seen through Xavier's
eyes, the replacements remain anonymous, lending far greater weight to losses among the original members of his
company.

Three Day Road deserves an honored place alongside Findley's The Wars on bookshelves and university reading
lists. It's a moving, insightful book that acknowledges the participation of First Nations people in a war that helped
shape Canada's place in the 20th century. It's a story of the Great War but a story of individuals first and foremost.
It's a tremendous accomplishment, even without recalling that it's this author's first novel.

Written for Rambles by Gregg Thurlbeck; published 3 September 2005
Source: http://www.rambles.net/boyden_3dayrd05.html

Theme Analyses: written by various critics

Aexmaple 1: Analysis of theme - Identity Defined

//

David has written his essay to define the word identity; he explores how Elijah and Xavier define their native
culture, and how native culture defines them. He also relates this theme to his personal experiences, as well as the
,y
life.

Three day road is the story of two native men whose identity is molded by the same surroundings in very different
tdK
,Kre? Your name, and the way you look
make up the who, of whom you are; just the same, religion, culture and beliefs makes up the what. Joseph

Three Day Road: Novel Analysis of Themes and Synopses

dZ
native culture, and native culture defines themselves. Identity can be defined through the two main questions


The two men arrive on the Western Front in Europe; Elijah Wiskeyjack, the younger of the two, having living with
nuns for the greater part of his life speaks much better English than Xavier. Elijah is the only connection to native
life and culture that Xavier has, and for this reason the bond between them is very great. As time progresses Elijah
is pressed to have a real conversation with the soldiers, and truly become one of the men. Consequently, tired of
standing on the sidelines, Elijah starts speaking /
E/d//
/dding around him, they see a native man, and when

this is proper and accurate native behaviour. Elijah proved that man defined native. So does that mean that is it
impossible for native to define man? Xavier proves otherwise.

Throughout the novel, Elijah changes more and more, giving Xavier the opportunity to realize how his best friend is
veering further away from his native culture, and from their sacred friendship which they have been holding on to
so tightly for so long. Xavier stays as close to his ways so he may remain purely native, and does feel obligated to
^

d//'D
day, thanking him that is was I who still breathed and not my enemy. (Boyden 224)

Xavier hunts like a native and continues to speak Cree and makes no conscious effort to change. As Elijah turns to
the white side, Xavier feels more obliged to stay as native as he can. Often, in the middle of many battles, Xavier
would stop all action and start starring at a tree and understand its pain, the native people are very quiet people
who stay to themselves and frequently reflect on life with native.

y/
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nurses. He starts to receive the impression that he actually physically is Elijah, which, instead of frightening him
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irreplaceable bond, Xavier stays as close to Elijah as he can to prevent to hold on to the native culture which he has
left.

I am of German heritage; and consider myself a proud German-Canadian. But my family, especially my ancestors
during the First World War, experienced persecution from society and felt shame about their birthright. They could
&>
DDD
grandparents, who all spoke German as their first language did not teach their children out of pure embarrassment
consequently the language has died within the family within a generation. Anti German attitudes were socially
advised, as a result the City of Berlin felt pressure to change its name, the name Kitchener acted as a suitable
replacement, as Kitchener was a British General during the battle of Waterloo.

To fit in, people often feel obligated to wear brand name clothes, and own the newest forms of technology since it
shows class and wealth; just for the same reasons that Elijah speaks with a British accent asking for tea. This way,
when people l
/
considered average; just as I understand why Xavier wants to so much keep his culture alive.

I dig deep to find a personal connection to that of Xavier. I make the connection of my grandparents, both the Volls
and the Reitzels, of how they hold on strongly to their Pre-Vatican II way of Roman Catholicism. They still, to this

Three Day Road: Novel Analysis of Themes and Synopses

day practice mass in Latin trying with all their might to keep there conservative ways alive for the little time it has
left, for in merely fifty years that way of religion will be a way of the past.
Whether it be, taking one step away from your religion and culture, or taking two steps into it. Identity is defined
through the way which we live our lives, sometimes our identity is brought out through the way which we live our
live, sometimes out identity is brought though the way we were raised, and sometimes it is brought out through
others.

Source: http://threedayroadlitjgattoni.edublogs.org/theme-analysis/

Analysis of Theme: Example 2
:erature because of the direction and the
:
lso
portrays the inequalities that these soldiers had to face on the home front and the front lines of battle even
though they had served their nation. The fiction that is portrayed in Three-Day Road has been influenced by Joseph
Z:
&tt
stories for his first novel, Three-Day Road"(Quill & Quire ). Along with this, Joseph Boyden who is partially
aboriginal allows the reader the security that Boyden has a general understanding of aboriginal issues in Canada,
and will have the utmost respect for individuals of his ancestry.

The characters in Three-Day Road are accurately portrayed for their time, and their treatment by the Canadian
Armed Forces. Joseph Boyden allows the reader to be immersed in an historically accurate setting and war
attitude, this allows the reader to sympathize with the two fictional main characters in the story. Since Boyden has
chosen two fictional main characters in his story it allows him to create emphasis on issues he feels necessary like
the inequality that is viewed to be perfectly normal in World War I, and their recalling of past abuses that took
place back in their Canadian residential school. This allows the reader to be educated on what the conditions were
like for these brave soldiers who were not treated equally. Boyden also uses the inspiration of Ojibwa Francis
Pegahmagabow, the legendary First World War sniper, and his struggles as a veteran after returning to Canada.
&D&
E:es the significance of this novel and why Three-Day Road should be viewed
differently than other pieces of Canadian literature.

Canada is a country that puts great emphasis on its multi cultural status, but the fact is Canada crippled its first
EE
viewed residential schoolE
culture and allowed them to have a more equal chance in Canadian society as is shown in the CBC archive
video(CBC Archives). Although the negative extent of residential schools was not intended, we as Canadians need
to learn from our mistakes and acknowledge that Canada has made multi cultural mistakes in the past that we
have learned from. This is what Joseph Boyden aids us in by opening a window to the majority of Canadians
d
:d-Day Road should be read by all Canadians.
Three-day Road does an excellent job of portraying the accomplishments of the first Nations in World War I, and
the serving done by these individuals in a country that did not serve them equally in return.

Source: http://threedayroadlitjgattoni.edublogs.org/theme-analysis/

Example 3: Analysis of theme
Three-day road has made a comeback! As stated in my previous blog I was disappointed in the author's choice of
story development. As I embark on this latest significant part of the novel, I noticed the story has made a strong

Three Day Road: Novel Analysis of Themes and Synopses

comeback by maintaining a large emphasis on the World War I parts of the book. The author also does an excellent
job of hooking the reader by abruptly ending sub story lines then tying them into the main storyline later in the
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the letter entails until later in the story. As to be expected, Joseph Boyden does an excellent job of describing the
chaos of war as shown in this quotation.

^/,/his arm is gone.
Blood spurts out of him in pulses. He struggles to sit up. I'm frozen up on the parapet, my legs and arms not
/^D/,
focus on me then. A smile comes to his face and his red moustache curls with his lips. He stretches his remaining
arm to me. I see the movement to my left. A couple of soldiers run up with rifles pointed and stare down at
D

This is just a synopsis of the extent of detail Joseph Boyden goes into when describing the horrors of the French
battlefields.

d/
addressed, for example the main theme of survival. This theme is also accompanied by insanity, and fear. Three-
Day Road is oozing with quotations to support these themes.

/
stop myself from throwing up, just as another soldier runs at me, this one much larger...he carries a war club in his
hand and swings it clumsily... I jump to the side and the force of his attack carries [him] onto the ground....with
both hands I drive the bayonet into his back. I can feel it bounce sharply off his spine before it finds a softer spot
d
'ysurvival is to fight, as treason at this time was
punished by firing squad.

dy
dent in the book that blatantly show Xavier


d//
Elijah smiles his wicked little-E/'/jump to my feet before I know that
I do it and approach Elijah with balled fists. Then I find myself reaching for my knife. But what he has said makes
me gag and I kneel down and stick my finger down my throat. The contents of my stomach come out in a slimy
glob.'X! Calm down!' Elijah says. 'I am only joking. What? Do you think I'm crazy' "(288)

dyy
well-being. He would have been more skeptical, and would have taken a less violent approach towards him.
Overall, I can see insanity being a reoccurring theme as I enter the last portion of my reading.

The theme of fear goes hand-in-hand with the theme of survival. Although, fear can always invoke unjustifiable
actions from individuals to secure survival. In this quarter of my novel fear is symptomatic of survival, and this is
shown through this tragic quotation.

/on it... As I head toward it,
I catch a movement to my left coming toward me. I turn and fire my rifle just as I see that it is a young woman. She
flies backwards, her face startled. She slumps against the wall....I peer quickly around me... A small child huddles in
the corner... She begins to cry when I approach the mother. "I am sorry, I am sorry," I repeat over and over, to the
child, to the mother... I turn toward the child to try and calm her, I come close enough that she begins to swing her
fists with terror at my legs. I hear Elijah's boots as he runs into the room. A rifle shot explodes and the child goes

Three Day Road: Novel Analysis of Themes and Synopses

still, a red hole punched in her chest by the bullet. "Mo-/z/

/

This quotation shows how fear is interconnected with survival, as fear prompts an individual to act out of quick
dy-being.

posted by Michael Le Souder @ Tuesday, March 03, 20093 Comments
Source: http://michaelleso-eng4u.blogspot.com/

Example 4: Analysis of Theme
When reflecting on the past 100 pages it has become evident that the novel has been more mentally demanding to
d:in the story. The
yt&/
of the story overwhelmingly reliant on the use of descriptive sex scenes that go above and beyond what the reader
needs to know. On the contrary I still found the World War I scenes very descriptive but mature in the manner of
drawing the reader a realistic perspective of war.

In this part the book still maintains its original theme of survival and its secondary theme of exclusion, but with
the addition of the theme addiction. Although addiction is present at the starting of the book it is not until now
,
the short needle from the moosehide bag in his chest pocket and slips it in quickly, efficiently, wincing as he hits a
tender area. His whole arm is tender. Elijah practices self-control, knowing as he floods his vein that he is using the
medicine right now out 

Another secondary theme of exclusion is demonstrated in this part of the novel. Exclusion is shown between the
Caucasian populace and the first Nations that have refused to give up their traditional ways. The exclusion from
this is demod/
tdE
de exclusion in Three-Zt
E/,z
tpeople who ignore us.... A few other Indians
d

Lastly, the main theme of survival still subsides in this selection of the book. The theme survival is still strong
throughout the book and the main characters Elijah and Xavier face imminent danger as displayed through their
run in with a German sniper.

/dE
fifteen feet away a corpse moves slightly and a puff of smoke comes out from it. Almost simultaneously wood
splinters and dirt clods explode between Elijah's head and my own and Elijah yelps in pain,.... I train my sights on it
and can suddenly see the barrel of a rifle pointing out.... I know that the sniper is reloading and it is a matter of
seconds before he will fire at us again. My rifle is steady on a place just above the rifle poking out from under the
/

/ough patch in my book, the overall read, once you get past the awkwardly
descriptive sex scenes in the book, is one of worthwhile proportions. The book still accurately betrays the struggles
these first Nations people went through.

posted by Michael Le Souder @ Tuesday, April 23, 20091 Comments
Source: http://michaelleso-eng4u.blogspot.com/