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
For Christmas, Xavier and Elijah’s unit stops at a village to drink and celebrate. They go from house to house and visit with different units and soldiers. A Frenchman named Francis approaches Elijah. “You do not look like the Canadians that I have seen,” Francis says. “I’m an Indian,” Elijah says. “From the North. This one too,” he says pointing at Xavier, “but he doesn’t speak much English.” Francis asks if Xavier speaks French. “He is a heathen,” Elijah answers. “He speaks his own tongue fluently, nothing else.”
Francis’s comment that Elijah doesn’t look like a Canadian is a blow to Elijah’s whitewashed identity. To Francis, a Canadian is white, and Elijah doesn’t fit the bill. This has the opposite affect on Elijah than on Xavier. Xavier clings to his Native identity, but Elijah wants to assimilate to white ways, and Francis’s comment makes Elijah feel less authentic. This also reflects Elijah’s disrespect for Xavier’s (and his own) Native identity and again claims it makes Xavier a “heathen.”
Themes
“I’ve heard of one of you Indians, a Canadian too,” Francis says to Elijah. “His name is Peggy, and he works alone.” Elijah stares. “I hear rumor that he is dead,” he says. “No,” says Francis, but Peggy’s “C.O. refuses to acknowledge all the kills he makes sine he doesn’t like to work with a spotter.” Francis continues. “I know who you are,” he says. Francis has heard of Elijah and Xavier and the German sniper. “Avoid what happens to Peggy,” Francis says. “Do what we do. Collect evidence of your kills. Do what my people taught your people a long time ago. Take the scalp of your enemy as proof. Take a bit of him to feed you.” Elijah smiles. “They will buy you honour among us,” Francis says. “And we are honourable men.”
Francis’s story of Peggy is very similar to the story Smithy tells earlier. Peggy is an Indian, so he gets no respect for the efforts he puts forth during the war, which Boyden suggests was a widespread problem during WWI. Interestingly, Elijah is given the idea to scalp his enemies—a popular trope in Indian stereotypes—by a Frenchman, who implies the French were the ones to teach the Indigenous people scalping in the first place. This takes the popular trope of Indians as savages who kill and scalp and turns it on its head, instead attributing this bloody act to the wemistikoshiw. Here, Boyden seems to imply that scalping is not “honourable,” and, as it turns out, not Indian either.
Themes
By late January, a call goes out for volunteers to “go over the top,” but Xavier has no desire to go. He watches as Elijah and the others put charcoal on their faces, and he thinks about the Frenchman, Francis. Xavier shudders. He thinks Francis is “windigo.” When Elijah and the others return, Elijah is eager to tell Xavier his story.
Xavier is losing his taste for war. His conscience is suffering because of all the killing, and he avoids directly entering the fight. He considers Francis to have gone windigo, but he has no idea that Elijah is about to do the very same thing.
Themes
Elijah tells Xavier that he and the others crawled out to the trench that moves toward the German line, and he found a place to slip through the wire fence. He came to a parapet and jumped to a metal roof below, but as he did, the roof collapsed into the trench below. Elijah found himself staring at three Germans and immediately pulled out his revolver. He shot one German in the head and with his free hand swung his war club at the second soldier’s head. The club stuck in his skull, and Elijah looked up to see the third soldier “level a rifle” at him. Elijah prepared himself for the blast, but the gun misfired. Elijah raised his revolver and shot the soldier in the head.
Elijah is sure and capable up against the German soldiers, even though he is caught off guard. He easily kills without hesitation, and he doesn’t appear to give any thought whatsoever to lives he takes. He also seems strangely accepting of death and has no fear when faced with it. Elijah later claims that he doesn’t think of death until flying in the airplane, and that appears to be true here. Death stares Elijah in the face and he is indifferent.
Themes
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Elijah doesn’t tell Xavier, but before he ran to join his unit, he took his “skinning knife from its sheath and pulled the man’s hair back,” scalping him with “careful motions.” He put the skin in his pack and slipped out of the trench. Elijah does tell Xavier, however, that the morphine has made him “lose too much weight” and that he hasn’t “been able to relieve his bowels in any satisfying way for a long, long time.” Xavier thinks Elijah “feels guilty.” Without the medicine, Elijah says, he becomes very sick; but with it, he is an “invincible hunter” “using his osprey’s vision to spot the enemy.”
This is when Elijah truly goes windigo. The scalps he takes metaphorically represent the taking and consumption of flesh within the First Nations legend. Elijah’s bloody acts further isolate him from Xavier and the others. He can’t very well parade his scalps around his unit; he’d be court-martialed for “atrocities at war.” Elijah’s scalps are just for himself, to satisfy his need for killing and flesh. Elijah does appear to feel guilty about his morphine addiction, but the high helps him to kill. With morphine, Elijah can fly like a bird, giving him more freedom and opportunity to kill.
Themes
