One Day on the River Essay

Elijah has grander and more dangerous dreams. Having been largely acculturated by a residential school breeding before escaping into the forest to live with Xavier and Niska, he has acquired the dubious skills of public relations and boastfulness as much as the crafts of the hunter. His English, learned from the nuns, is impeccable, and he makes his mark among the work force in the trenches as much by the flash of his storytelling as by his murderous midnight prowls in no mans land.Gradually Elijah becomes imprisoned by two great obsessions a need for morphine, whose use is rampant up and down the lines, and an insatiable hunger for killing. Some French soldiers suggest that if he genuinely wants to gain respect for all his kills, he should scalp 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 home after the war is over. Nisk a is part of the sad but admirable remnant of traditional natives who refused to enter the reserves in the 19th century, choosing quite to live by their wits and traditional teachings in the woods.Subject to what modern medicine would name epileptic seizures, Niska is deemed by her tribe to have inherited her takes skills as a shaman and a windigo-killer. Since windigos manifest themselves in humans who have practiced cannibalism, getting rid of them involves what exsanguinous society would call murder, and indeed Niskas father was executed as a murderer by the white courts. The constant crossing of the moral lines between the worldviews of native and white society is one 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 number three, which he sees as an obsession of his white commanders. Theres the front line, the support line, and the reserve line, for starters. Th eres the infantry, the cavalry, and the artillery. Off the battlefield, theres food, hence rest, then women. In church, theres the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Not to mention the superstition about lighting three cigarettes with one match, a prime metaphor for court danger in the Great War. But then Xavier suddenly remembers Niskas traditional teaching, that those who are dying must walk the three-day road to death, and he wonders if we parting something, some magic. Maybe it will help me get through all this.The real war hero, Peggy, makes a brief cameo appearance in the novel, which may not have been a wise 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 stamp of authentication.