Three Day Road Themes

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…

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…

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…