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Mistatimwak: Horses
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
Elijah climbs a beam in the farmhouse. He can see the German line perfectly. He takes a syringe and injects himself. “I’m just dabbling with it,” Elijah says to Xavier. Suddenly, bullets whip through the air and explode in the dirt near the house. “Watch our lines,” Elijah says. “Soon you will see us go over the top.” Within minutes, swarms of Canadian soldiers run from the trenches and begin to move across “no man’s land.” They are met with German fire, and Elijah and Xavier quickly take aim at the machine-gun nest and begin shooting.
Elijah is so deep into his addiction that he doesn’t even try to hide it anymore (Xavier gets to a similar point with Niska), even though he continues to downplay it. Several units of Canadians stormed the Candy Trenches that day, and they were met with constant machine-gunfire like the men are here. The battle was ultimately a victory for the Allied forces, but the Canadians lost thousands of soldiers. The 22nd Battalion, one of three Canadian units to initially rush the trenches, went in with 800 men, and at the end of three days, there was only 118 of them left.
Themes
The firing continues and “dozens” of Canadians are killed, but they continue to advance. “Look, X!” Elijah yells to Xavier. “Look! We are going to take their trenches!” Within an hour, the Canadians have taken Candy Trench, and Elijah can see clear into the trenches beyond. It is far, but he can make out German soldiers, and he is sure he can make the shot. He looks once more and shoots. “He’s down,” Xavier says. “You hit him the neck.” Elijah smiles. “The best shooting I’ve done,” Elijah says, but the gunshot has deafened Xavier and he doesn’t hear him.
The image of thousands of men running into machine-gunfire and certain death seems irrational. It is suicide, yet they just keep running into it. This harkens back to Niska’s claim that “windigos will spring from the earth” with the war. This level of death and destruction is insane, suggesting that Elijah isn’t the only one who has gone mad with self-destructive bloodlust.
Themes
Back in the Canadian trenches, Elijah finds Breech to report their kills. “Was an officer there to verify?” Breech asks. Elijah confirmed there was not. “Your claim seems a little exaggerated to me,” Breech says. Elijah goes back to the dugout he shares with Xavier to sleep. All the men are exhausted. Many are sick with pneumonia, and their feet turn black and rot with trenchfoot. There is death everywhere, and Xavier is sick of all the corpses, but Elijah volunteers for “burial duty.” Before he buries a corpse, he looks into the eyes and feels “a strange spark of warmth” in his stomach. Elijah says it “fills his belly when it gnaws for food.”
Breech treats Elijah much like Peggy’s commanding officers treat him. Breech doesn’t believe Elijah because he is an Indian, and Breech believes this also makes Elijah a liar. Elijah’s obsession with death and corpses is a metaphor for the cannibalism associated with the legend of the windigo. Looking into the eyes of the dead “fills [Elijah’s] belly,” almost as if he is consuming them. This passage also reflects the additional dangers the soldiers faced besides war. All told, nearly 2 million soldiers died of illness or disease during WWI.
Themes
