How Does Elijah Fall Into Savagery In Three Day Road

He is someone I no longer know: Elijah’s Fall Into Savagery In Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road the reader is introduced to the main characters Elijah Wesageechak and Xavier Bird. Both boys grow up transitioning from residential school, to the wilderness, and finally to the inhumanity of war. In the end, Xavier does not even recognize his childhood best friend. As the story progresses, the two go through many changes resulting in Elijah’s detrimental transformation. Elijah’s downfall into savagery and madness is caused by the loss of identity from residential schools, and is seen through the spiritual form of the Windigo which enters through his hunger for morphine and killing.
Firstly, the young boys meet at residential school and make plans together to run away. When Xavier arrives at the school he is instantly befriended by Elijah, an orphan boy. It was here that Elijah began his loss of identity as a First Nations person and began adopting …show more content…
Elijah quickly wants to be accepted and to fit in with the other soldiers. Grey Eyes is an older soldier who is addicted to morphine and Elijah interacts with him frequently. He is intrigued by his addiction and became curious about the medicine which made Grey Eyes float away into his own world. Elijah caved and his first injection of the gleaming gold liquid is not going to be the last. Xavier describes Elijah when he is lost in the medicine, “‘But when the golden liquid is in his veins!’ Even at night the world is bathed in a soft light…He can make himself float from his body at will and look down at the world below him” (212). Xavier explains how the morphine is an out of body experience for Elijah. Xavier notices that Elijah is not himself and is displaying distinctive characteristics. Even though he promises not to associate with Grey Eyes and get involved with the morphine, Xavier can sense that something is not