Isolation vs. Community
At the center of Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road is the First Nations legend of the windigo. Within North American Indigenous culture, the windigo is an evil spirit, often depicted as a large and powerful monster, whose hunger can only be satisfied by human flesh. When Micah, a respected Cree hunter, leaves his tribe and goes into the bush with his family, his wife finds the tracks of the windigo circling their lodge…
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Racism and Assimilation
In Three Day Road, the Indigenous people of Northern Canada are constantly plagued by the wemistikoshiw, or white settlers, whose encroaching presence threatens their traditional way of life. Indigenous people in Boyden’s novel are met with blatant racism and are forced to assimilate to wemistikoshiw ways, which threatens to completely erase their own Native culture and identity. For example, the mother of Xavier, the novel’s protagonist, goes to the Moose Factory reserve…
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Language and Storytelling
Three Day Road unfolds in a series of flashbacks and stories, told mostly through Xavier and his aunt, Niska. In a world increasingly whitewashed by the ever encroaching wemistikoshiw, storytelling is a powerful way for Xavier and Niska to connect with their Cree culture. Xavier and his best friend, Elijah, take their traditional stories all the way to France during the war, and they fight to maintain their Indigenous identities through the…
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Nature, War, and Survival
Throughout Three Day Road, Joseph Boyden juxtaposes survival in the bush of Northern Canada against survival in the trenches of World War I. The novel’s protagonist, Xavier Bird, is a Cree Indian, and his deep cultural connection to his indigenous land gives him a unique advantage in the bush and, as it turns out, in the trenches as well. When Xavier first arrives on the front lines and his novice unit is frightened…
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