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 telling of their stories. But although the positive power of storytelling and language is undeniable in Three Day Road, language is also a double-edged sword, capable of isolating and marginalizing the novel’s Indigenous characters. Through the portrayal of language and storytelling in Three Day Road, Boyden at once underscores the power of language to marginalize and alienate, and simultaneously argues for the power of language and storytelling to preserve Indigenous life and culture.
While storytelling is a way for Niska to uphold her culture, she also believes her traditional stories have the power to preserve Native lives. Niska’s father “was the last great talker in [their] clan” and frequently told stories. Niska imagined that her father “weaved his stories all summer” into “invisible nets” that kept them warm in winter. Huddled together, listening to the stories in the collective warmth of her family, Niska claims that her father’s stories “were all that [they] had to keep [them] alive” during the cold winter, positioning storytelling as a nourishing, sustaining force. Later, when Xavier comes home from the war, he is consumed by fever and “something far worse,” and Niska fears he is dying. On their three-day trip home, Niska tells Xavier the story of her childhood “to keep him alive.” Just as her father’s stories saved Niska’s life, Niska hopes to save Xavier’s through her own storytelling.
Xavier likewise uses language to maintain his Native identity while fighting in World War I, surrounded by white people who want to minimize his identity and culture. When the Canadian soldiers march, they sing songs that make very little sense to Xavier. “I have my own songs,” Xavier says and refuses to sing. Instead of conforming to wemistikoshiw ways, Xavier holds tight to his culture by clinging to songs that are in his language. And even though he can’t remember the words to these songs, he resolves to hum what he can remember, tenaciously clinging to whatever part of his Native identity that he can. Xavier begins to learn the English language the longer he is in the wemistikoshiw army, but he pretends he doesn’t. When an officer speaks to him, he answers only in Cree. By deliberately speaking Cree rather than English, Xavier uses language to cling to his Native identity in an environment that threatens to stamp it out.
Despite the power of language and storytelling in Three Day Road, however, language also causes a great deal of pain and confusion for the novel’s Indigenous characters. When Niska sends Xavier a letter during the war, she must dictate it through Joseph Netmaker, a local Cree man. However, Joseph’s letter mistakenly implies that Niska has died, and when Xavier receives the letter, he becomes “sour” and loses his “desire for survival.” Joseph’s poor English causes Xavier undue stress and emotional “damage,” highlighting how language can tear down the novel’s Native characters just as much as it can build them up. Language is also dangerously alienating on the battlefield. As Sergeant McCaan shows Xavier how to use the periscope in the trenches of World War I, McCaan’s movement draws the attention of enemy fire. Xavier notices a split second before the gunfire begins and goes to warn McCaan, but he doesn’t know the English words. All that comes out is “a stream of Cree.” Although intentionally speaking Cree rather than English is how Xavier maintains his connection to his identity while at war, here his unintentional choice of Cree—unable to grasp the right words in English—alienates him from his comrades. McCaan isn’t shot (he suffers only a black eye), but the language barrier nearly costs him his life.
By the end of the war, Elijah is dead and Xavier has lost his leg, and while Niska’s stories bring the occasional smile to his face, Xavier’s guilt and addiction to Morphine continue to destroy him. Near the end of the three-day journey home, Xavier finally tells the story of Elijah’s death—that Elijah had “gone windigo” and Xavier was forced to kill him—and once he does, Xavier’s fever begins to subside. Like Niska, Xavier is ostensibly (his fate is never revealed) saved by his story, and this too reflects Boyden’s overarching argument of the power of storytelling. By telling his story, Xavier purges some of the guilt and pain that consumes him, and for the first time, it appears that he may live.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Language and Storytelling ThemeTracker
Language and Storytelling Quotes in Three Day Road
McCaan whispers out to all of us to regain our wits, that this is our first true test as soldiers and that for all we know we may be in enemy territory and that from this moment on our lives hang in the balance. "You are acting like rabbits," he says. "It is time to act like wolves,” and these are the perfect words. I can almost hear the backs of the men around me stiffen and the hairs on their necks bristle and it is exactly this, to be the hunter and not the hunted, that will keep me alive. This law is the same law as in the bush. Turn fear and panic into the sharp blade of survival.
I know that Xavier wants to talk to me. He goes so far as to let words come out of his mouth when he sleeps. He says very little when he's awake. I'm not able to make out more than the odd sentence when he is sleeping, though, and sometimes when he dreams he speaks aloud in English. I can't help but smile a bit when he does. As a child he was so proud that more than once he claimed he would never speak the wemistikoshiw tongue. And now he does even in his sleep. He cannot speak to me yet, and so I decide, here on the river, that I will speak to him. In this way, maybe his tongue will loosen some. Maybe some of the poison that courses through him might be released in this way. Words are all I have left now. I've lived alone so long that I realize I'm starved to talk. And so, as I paddle him gently with the river, I talk to him, tell him about my life.
"Whiskeyjacks should fly better," he says.
Elijah looks at him. "How do you know my name?"
"I don't," the man says. "I was dreaming. There was a flock of whiskeyjacks." He looks confused. "They were pecking at something dead."
Elijah stands and walks back to me.
"What did the old man say to you?" I ask.
"He knew my name. Claims he was dreaming of whiskeyjacks."
"It's a sign,” I say.
"Everything's a sign to you." Elijah looks out the window. "Hey, there’s a sign," he says, pointing outside. "It says Abitibi River. But you wouldn't know that, considering you're a heathen."
I made Xavier smile with my story of smacking the nun with my paddle, and this gives me hope. Steering the canoe slow through the afternoon I watch him drift into sleep. It is a restless time for him, and his face looks like a scared child's when he cries out. To try and ease him a little, I start talking again. The story is not a happy one, but something in me has to tell it. There is truth in this story that Xavier needs to hear, and maybe it is best that he hears it in sleep so that the medicine in the tale can slip into him unnoticed.
I remember when he began to explore the places that aren't safe to explore. I remember him learning to love killing rather than simply killing to survive. Even when he went so far into that other place that I worried for him constantly, he still loved to tell me stories. He never lost his ability to talk. I think it was this ability that fooled the others around us into believing he hadn't gone mad. But I knew.
