The Narrator In Joseph Boyden's Three Day Road

Character narrators are a way of looking at scenes through an individual’s eyes. Using this point of view creates a more personal story, but it can also form a biased, unreliable view. By introducing a second character narrator, the reader is given a second point of view that enforces the first narrator and strengthens the story. In Three Day Road, Joseph Boyden gives two character narrators, Xavier and Niska. The present narrative is of the characters travelling down the river to Niska’s home in the bush, after Niska has retrieved Xavier from the train station, home from World War I. During this journey, Niska tells stories and reflects on her past as Xavier, in a morphine-dazed state, recalls his experiences in the war. Niska serving as a …show more content…
To support Xavier’s story, Boyden allows Niska’s character to tell stories and reflect on past experiences. This gives a cultural foundation for both of the characters, creates a setting of the past that Xavier has not experienced, and sets up a background of mutual understanding between the two, and gives explanations that are missing from Xavier’s story. To start, Niska tells stories of growing up in the bush. She gives accounts of family life; her father was a prominent “hookimaw (44)”, or leader, and “the last great talker in the clan (34)”, and her mother knew and taught her the ‘magic deep in the bush (90).’ The clan lived off the land, relying on hunting and community for survival. These accounts set the foundation for both Niska and Xavier’s cultural background. Stories of Niska’s young clan life give the reader a sense of how things used to be. Xavier could not provide details like this as he had not grown up in an indigenous community, rather living a solitary life with Niska after being rescued from a residential school. Moving on, Niska tells of growing hardships within her Cree community. With the growing