Grandfather Teachings In Richard Wagamese's Indian Horse

While reading Richard Wagamese’s book Indian Horse, many, if not all seven Grandfather Teachings were said or explained during the novel. Even though, Saul Indian Horse had a tragic beginning in life, as he grew older he became aware of what happened in his past and in many ways that made him a lot wiser. However, Wagamese showed these three Grandfather’s teachings and their importance some more than the rest of them; being love, wisdom and truth.
One of the most important lessons that Saul had to learn in Wagameses’s book Indian Horse was love. He had learned to love hockey, which in his younger years it was his escape of his haunted memories made by Father Leboutilier and the cruel punishments other children received. “When I hit the ice …show more content…
He was even introduced to them before he arrived to St Jerome's because his parents went to a residential school themselves. Like his grandmother mentioned in the early pages of the book “That school gave you words that do not apply to us”(Wagamese 26). Which is true, the school took his parents’ roots away and taught them to follow a different religion other than their spiritual ways, leaving their history behind and making them forget where they came from. His parents choose to live in the words of Jesus Christ even when they got back to their reserve, instead of listening to their own Elders words and teachings. That had an effect on Saul when he was little because when his brother Benjamin died at God’s Lake after escaping the residential school with TB his parents wanted to have him buried by the church. Whereas Saul’s grandmother wanted to do it the traditional way that their family did things. Saul learned later that his grandmother meant well for the sake of their roots. In Saul’s case this had happened to him, he was sent to a residential school and managed to have a family get him out of there. He had enough courage in him to want to learn the truth and to relearn his history by taking steps and glances back into his past. “I went back to learn the truth, I had discovered locked up deep inside of me. I went back because I wanted to learn how to deal with it without drinking. …show more content…
In particular, Saul Indian Horse learned love, wisdom and truth. These are the teachings that carried him on throughout the novel and kept him moving forward it kept him together, even during the hardest of times and he remembered to turn on the light. That was how Saul Indian Horse became whole