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Moosasiniwi Paskisikan: Rifle
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
The rain continues, but McCaan says they will still go on the raid. Elijah’s “stomach is sick,” and he feels like vomiting. His head “pounds along with the big guns.” McCaan orders Xavier and Elijah to go over the top and take out the machine-gun nest. They are to drop in some Mills bombs, place charges in the nest, and blow the whole thing up before coming back.
Elijah is obviously in withdrawal, and his body is screaming for morphine. He is no longer merely fidgety but is physically ill, and he is expected to go over the top. Elijah is in such bad shape that even standing upright is a chore. His condition shows that, like committing violent acts, morphine use has become a means of survival for him.
Themes
Xavier loses sight of Elijah in the darkness, and then he hears gunfire and the explosion of a Mills bomb. He waits for the gunfire to subside and runs to find Elijah. He is on the ground, “covered in red mud.” Xavier rolls Elijah over and throws a Mills bomb toward the machine-gun nest. He lights a charge and drops it in the nest and pulls Elijah back to the trenches. McCaan meets them with Driscoll. “Just a few scrapes, possibly a broken arm,” Driscoll says as he injects Elijah with morphine. Xavier watches as Elijah looks “different” and goes to a “calmer place.”
Boyden doesn’t explicitly state that Elijah deliberately gets hurt to get morphine, but it is certainly implied. Furthermore, Xavier’s actions in saving Elijah’s life are incredibly heroic but are completely ignored by his superior officers. As Xavier refuses to assimilate like Elijah has, Xavier is a “brown ghost,” and his own heroics are completely ignored.
Themes
Elijah “fared better than Thompson,” who took a bullet and some shrapnel. He is “close to death” at a hospital far from the line. There is talk in the unit of Elijah getting a medal for “rushing the nest” but nothing of Xavier’s efforts to “finish things up for him.”
Not only are Xavier’s heroic actions ignored here, but Elijah is given praise he likely doesn’t deserve. Elijah may have intentionally put himself in harm’s way, which endangers the other men in his unit as well.
Themes
One night, Elijah helps Gilberto write a letter to his wife. Elijah’s “desire to help somebody else with his words” makes Xavier think of when he and Elijah were boys. Xavier lived on the reserve for a short time after his mother, Rabbit, gave him up, and he met Elijah there. Elijah taught Xavier some English, and Xavier began “to understand the power of these letters and words.” Elijah laughs as he helps Gilberto, but Xavier can see the “strong tide” of the medicine in his eyes. “I know now that it is more than medicine,” Xavier says. “Much more.”
This passage reflects the “power” of language. Elijah’s own power was stripped when he was born on a reserve and told he was something less than the wemistikoshiw, and he attempts to regain some of lost this power through language. While Xavier clings to his Native language to adhere to his cultural identity, English opens doors for Elijah and gives him power. He can more effectively communicate and talk himself out of trouble; Xavier can’t do this quite as well as Elijah.
Themes
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“And you, X. Xavier Bird,” Fat says. “How is it that a man comes by a name like yours?” Xavier explains that he is a “James Bay Cree” and tells Fat “the story of [his] name.” He asks about Elijah’s name, Whiskeyjack, too. Elijah’s Cree name is Weesageechak, but he never tells people this. The wemistikoshiw say “Whiskeyjack.” That is how they “make it their own,” and Elijah doesn’t correct them.
Even Elijah’s name is evidence of his assimilation. He could keep his actual name and correct the wemistikoshiw when they mispronounce it, but he doesn’t. He is more than happy to let the wemistikoshiw “make [his name] their own.” After all, the “only Indian” Elijah wants to be is the kind that can “hunt and hide.” He isn’t interested in being authentic.
Themes
Weesageechak is a legendary “trickster” in Anishnabe culture and can take “different forms at will.” The white traders could never pronounce the word “with their thick tongues,” but “they saw the trickster in the whiskeyjack, the grey jay that loves to hear his own voice, is bold enough to steal food from their hands when they were not watching.”
Elijah is reflected in both the weesageechak and the grey jay. Elijah is boastful and likes to play tricks, and he is sneaky. This also underscores the connection between Indigenous culture and nature. Even though Elijah isn’t particularly interested in embracing his Native identity, he still can’t escape his connection to birds and nature.
Themes
At the end of August, Xavier and Elijah’s unit rests near Saint-Eloi. Elijah takes Xavier to the estaminet as often as possible, and there they “drink like soldiers.” Xavier notices a girl, and she smiles at him. Elijah notices her, too, and goes to talk to her. “See that one there?” Elijah says when he returns. “She’s the daughter of the owner. Nice girl but not worth the wasted effort when I can just pay one of the others for what I want.” He motions to some women. “Let’s get you a little something special. My treat,” Elijah says. But Xavier isn’t interested. “She smiled at me,” Xavier thinks. “I’m sure of it.”
Of course, Elijah is lying here, too. The girl is Lisette, and she is a prostitute, not the daughter of a pub owner. Elijah knows that Xavier isn’t likely to solicit a prostitute, so he tricks him. This is incredibly dishonest on Elijah’s part, but it also underscores one of Boyden’s main points: no one can be alone all the time. Xavier is completely isolated in the army, and like Niska’s story with the tapper, Xavier yearns for human contact too.
Themes
Xavier meets the girl, whose name is Lisette, the next night, and she takes him to a small pond. Without speaking, she lies in the grass, and Xavier takes his clothes off. They hold each other, and before Xavier knows it, “she is on top of [him], her head back and mouth open.” After, they hold each other without speaking, then Lisette says she must get back before her father knows she has gone. Xavier asks to walk her, and she refuses. “If anyone saw us, I would be in trouble,” she says.
This, too, speaks to Xavier’s loneliness and isolation. He is eager to be near Lisette but doesn’t know that she is a prostitute who has already been paid by Elijah. This is Xavier’s first sexual experience, and he quickly begins to fall in love with Lisette. Just as Xavier doesn’t take killing and war lightly, he doesn’t take sex lightly either.
Themes
Two days later, Xavier’s unit is sent away from Saint-Eloi to a place called The Brickfields. The “only thing” about The Brickfields that “is not depressing” is the view “straight up in the air.” The world is a “wreck,” but “the birds continue to fly above as if nothing has changed.” Xavier watches a flock of sparrows and thinks of the first time he rode the train with Elijah, on their way to fight in the war. “No Indians in this car,” a man said as they boarded. “You belong four cars back.”
This is obvious evidence of the blatant racism that Xavier and Elijah must endure as Indigenous people, but it also reflects Boyden’s use of birds as a symbol of nature. Here, nature is completely indifferent to the war and carries on as if there isn’t mass killing going on below. “The Brickfields” is a reference to a location behind the frontlines along the Somme River in France where the Canadians would rest between battles, which historically places this somewhere in the fall of 1916. From September to October, 20,000 Canadian soldiers were killed in battles near the Somme.
Themes
In the back of the train, several Indians sit without speaking. Elijah begins to horse around, teasing Xavier. “Look at your moccasins!” Elijah laughs. “That is the real reason we’ve been sent back here with the bush Indians.” The train takes a sudden turn, and Elijah is thrown into the lap of a sleeping Indian man. “Whiskeyjacks should fly better,” he says. “How do you know my name?” Elijah asks. “I don’t,” the man answers. “I was dreaming. There was a flock of whiskeyjacks. They were pecking at something dead.”
Elijah frequently degrades Xavier because of his bush identity, and here he implies it is why they are forced to sit in the back of the train, not because the wemistikoshiw are racist. The Indian man’s dream foretells Elijah experiences in the war (and it further draws a parallel between Elijah and grey jays), where he is constantly “pecking at something dead” as a sniper for the army.
Themes
“It’s a sign,” Xavier says to Elijah. Elijah laughs. “Everything’s a sign to you.” He looks out the window at an approaching railroad sign. “Hey, there’s a sign,” he says. “It says Abitibi River. But you wouldn’t know that, considering you’re a heathen.”
Elijah clearly believes the racist assumptions of the wemistikoshiw, who assume that since Xavier doesn’t read or write English, he must also be a “heathen.” Here, Elijah makes Xavier seem particularly stupid because he doesn’t read or write, which also underscores how damaging language can be to Indigenous people.
Themes
