Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Three Day Road, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Isolation vs. Community
Racism and Assimilation
Language and Storytelling
Nature, War, and Survival
Summary
Analysis
Sean Patrick is at his sniping post with his spotter, Grey Eyes, who “has the glassy look of the medicine in his veins.”. Xavier looks up to the sky and sees an airplane, but he doesn’t know which side it belongs to. Suddenly, Sean Patrick is “writhing” on the ground “like a snake and grabbing his neck.” Graves immediately runs to him. “Shot through the neck,” he says as he rolls Sean Patrick over.
Presumably, Sean Patrick is killed because Grey Eyes is high on morphine and is not paying attention. Sean Patrick is looking only through a scope and can’t pay attention to what is going on around him. That is Grey Eyes’s job, and he failed miserably at it. While there is a code of honor that Native people like Xavier and Elijah follow when hunting in the bush, these standards do not translate in the context of the wemistikoshiw war.
Themes
“I told [Sean Patrick] to take a break,” Grey Eyes says. “I told him that he’s too tall to be sniping here.” Xavier and Elijah bury Sean Patrick behind the lines that night. Elijah says it was a “Hun sniper” who shot him, and a good one too. The shot that took out Sean Patrick from behind the metal plate of the sniping post must have been extremely difficult, and Elijah is “obsessed” with making a similar shot.
Grey Eyes knows that he shouldn’t be on morphine while on duty, so he tries to displace the blame onto Sean Patrick so he can feel less responsible and be above suspicion. Instead of mourning the death of his fallen comrade, Elijah is concerned only with the shooter, which is further evidence that he is going windigo. Elijah doesn’t want the German sniper to better than him either, so he must make a similar, or better, shot.
Themes
Elijah “goes into another place” when he is sniping. He “forgets his British accent and his bragging,” and becomes “patient.” Sometimes, Elijah tells Xavier what the Germans are doing behind their lines and what movements they will make in the upcoming days. It seems that “Elijah is lifted from his body and carried to the other side where he can float around at will.” Xavier wonders if Elijah is taking medicine from Grey Eyes, but Xavier is sure that he isn’t. At times, Xavier is “tempted to try it” himself.
Elijah’s ability to foretell German movement proves he is already taking morphine. When Elijah injects morphine, he can float above his body and assess his surroundings, and he is clearly doing this here. Elijah doesn’t stop bragging and quit using his British accent because of his dedication to being a good sniper; these are things he gradually stops doing as he becomes addicted to morphine, which Boyden implies Elijah already is.
Themes
Xavier “adopts Elijah’s ways” and tries to “think like the Hun, particularly the very good one who killed Sean Patrick.” Xavier tells Elijah that it is easiest for him if he thinks of his targets with “antlers on their heads.” Antlers “will make it all the easier when the time comes to shoot one,” Xavier says. Elijah laughs. Xavier jokes, but he spends “[his] hours wondering what [he] will do when it is [his] turn to pull a trigger on a man.”
Xavier hopes that it will make it easier to kill a man if he imagines he is killing an animal back in the bush. But people aren’t animals, and this false equivalency fails to help Xavier adjust to taking human life. Elijah, however, has no problems taking human life. He knows killing men isn’t the same as killing animals, he just doesn’t care.
Themes
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