Racism In Xavier And Niska's Three Day Road

One extremely prevalent theme in Three Day Road is the racism and oppression of the Native American people. This theme can be seen in both the boy’s lives as well as Niska’s. For example, in reference to Xavier and Elijah, the boys experience prejudice through how the two are forced to work twice as hard to get any recognition in their battalion, simply due to the fact that some of the officers think them to be useless Native Americans. Additionally, this theme can also be seen through one of Niska’s stories in which she recalls the French man who tricked and betrayed her thinking he could ruin her spirit. Moreover, this theme is a vital part of the story as it is this discrimination that causes majority of the confrontations in the novel, …show more content…
From this point on, Elijah scalps all his victims and keeps the hair as a prize. This event portrays Elijah’s final turning point in which he no longer has any innocence or his past self left. All this leaves behind is a bloodthirsty animal that no longer sees people, but rather prizes and where there once was a war, is now a game. Moreover, this also represents Elijah’s loss of innocence as now one can blatantly see that Elijah is no longer just killing due to the fact that he has to, but due to the fact he wants to and more importantly as an attempt for recognition and respect. Furthermore, not only is he now viewing people as a prize, but he is mutilating their corpses as a prize for himself. This is especially astonishing when one takes into account the fact that at the beginning of the novel Elijah could barely kill a marten, proving his change in character. "He carries his scalps with him and has dried them out to prevent rot and strung them together. I don't know how many he has. . . . "The French will respect me," he says eyes glowing. "I am better than Peggy. He cannot take a scalp. He cannot do what I