Elijah's Madness In Three Day Road

One of the greatest fictional villains of all time, Joker, once said, “Madness, as you know, is like gravity. All it takes is a little push”. The quote is epitomized by the show, but sure, deterioration of the mental state of Elijah in Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road. It is easy to attribute Elijah's fall from the brink of sanity to the circumstances of war, however, it would be much more accurate to make the claim that Elijah’s insanity is caused by his own characteristics. Elijah metaphorically becomes his own enemy while on the front lines. His struggle with his addictions and his quest to prove to others and to himself that he is the greatest sniper in the war, lead to his lunacy and ultimately, his demise. There is no doubt that the war

It can be argued that this is the greatest factor to Elijah’s breakdown because it leads to Elijah’s addiction to killing and is a more intense desire than proving his greatness to others. Throughout the novel, Elijah take unnecessarily dangerous risks so that he can add more kills to his already ridiculously high count. Sometimes, Elijah leaves the camp for days without Xavier to go sniping by himself. Xavier rebukes Elijah when his incessant risk-taking nearly gets them both killed: “Put yourself in danger if you like, but not me!” (285). What makes this factor of Elijah’s insanity so interesting is that it is the only one that Elijah cannot satisfy. He can satisfy his addiction to morphine and killing by taking morphine and killing. And it is not hard for him to prove to other that he is extremely skilled at sniping, but he cannot seem to prove to himself that he is the best. Although no one else seems to take notice of Xavier, Elijah knows that he will never be better than Xavier: “You always were the better shot” (368). Throughout the story, Xavier is always subtly proving his dominance over Elijah, for example, in the shooting competition in the training camp and when Xavier is able to kill the German sniper in no man’s land. The Mauser rifle that Xavier takes from the German is a symbol for Elijah’s jealousy of Xavier—hence Elijah’s jealousy is what finally kills him. Elijah is highly competitive and understands that Xavier will always be better than him. His inability to prove to himself that he is the best sniper is the biggest contributor to Elijah going