One Day on the River Essay

Elijah has grander and more unreliable dreams. Having been largely acculturated by a residential school upbringing before escaping into the afforest to live with Xavier and Niska, he has acquired the dubious skills of semipublic relations and boastfulness as ofttimes as the crafts of the hunter. His English, learned from the nuns, is impeccable, and he makes his denounce among the men in the trenches as over such(prenominal) by the flash of his drooltelling as by his murderous midnight prowls in no populaces land.Gradually Elijah becomes impris 1d by two great obsessions a enquire for morphine, whose use is rampant up and mountain the lines, and an insatiable hunger for killing. Some cut soldiers suggest that if he really wants to develop respect for all his kills, he should sell his victims as evidence. He decides to do so, much to Xaviers disgust.In counterpoint to the exploits of Xavier and Elijah, Boyden interweaves the story of Niska, told as she paddles her wounded nephew back groundwork after the war is over. Niska is part of the condemnable but admirable remnant of traditionalistic natives who refused to enter the reserves in the nineteenth century, choosing instead to live by their wits and traditional teachings in the woods.Subject to what groundbreaking medicine would call epileptic seizures, Niska is deemed by her tribe to have inherited her baffles skills as a shaman and a windigo-killer. Since windigos manifest themselves in universe who have practiced cannibalism, getting unfreeze of them involves what ovalbumin society would call murder, and hence Niskas father was executed as a murderer by the clean-living courts. The constant crossing of the moral lines between the worldviews of native and white society is wholeness of the many strengths of this fascinating novel.At one point, hunkered down in his snipers nest, Xavier indulges himself (and the reader) in a contemplation on the identification number three, which he sees as an obsession of his white commanders. Theres the front line, the brave out line, and the reserve line, for starters. Theres the infantry, the cavalry, and the artillery. clear up the battlefield, theres food, hence rest, hence women. In church, theres the Father, Son, and dedicated Ghost. Not to mention the superstition somewhat lighting three cig arttes with one match, a prime metaphor for courting endangerment in the Great War. But then Xavier suddenly remembers Niskas traditional teaching, that those who are dying must walk the three-day alley to death, and he wonders if we share something, some magic. whitethornhap it will help me get by all this.The real war hero, Peggy, makes a brief cameo appearance in the novel, which may not have been a smart choice on the authors part. The characters of Xavier and Niska and, to a slightly lesser extent, Elijah are full to the brim with life theyre quite satisfying and believable as they are, and need no further mold of auth entication.