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Recommended: The emotional effects of war on soldiers

According to Joseph Boyden, "They lived in the mud like rats and lived only to think of new ways to kill one another. No one is safe in such times, not even the Cree of Mushkegowuk. War touches everyone, and windigos spring from the earth"(49). For those who think that joining a war is an opportunity for adventure and excitement, they are wrong. In reality, it is the opposite with life and death on the line due to unnecessary slaughter between human beings because they cannot solve their own conflicts. This devastating topic is told by Joseph Boyden’s novel "Three Day Road" by two different protagonists sharing their own adventures and their conflicts. The protagonist Xavier and antagonist Elijah experience bloody warfare ability to cause havoc. They begin to understand that bloody warfare can make them physically and mentally draining over time because how it changes a person personality making them corrupt with intent to become a windigo themselves like Elijah did, striving to kill another human being as their only goal for survival. As humans, Joseph Boyden is reflecting that if the readers were Xavier or Elijah themselves place in that unstable environment filled with diseases and distraught. We would experience the same kind of suffering Elijah and Xavier had to go through.
Complications with new-founded relationships have a negative impact towards characters themselves in a bloody warfare setting because the first meeting between Xavier and Lisette. This leads to him to think he has this similar bonding with her. However, in reality it was short but meaningless only to cause trouble for himself. To illustrate Xavier’s confidence of wanting to talk to Lisette, he does it by intoxicating himself with alcohol to hide his shyne...

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...madness out of him, Xavier says “You have gone mad. There is no coming back from where you have travelled” (370). Mental illness had contributed Elijah’s downfall becasue he could not think clearly on his priorities. Therefore, Elijah relies on killing Germans as his divinity to cure his illness but at the same time doesn’t realize he became a windigo that kills human beings for power. In conclusion, characters like Elijah who are affected by mental illness are suspected to show different symptoms and personality changes because they had lost all sense of ability to retain their human selves bust instead become bloody savages.
As a result, Elijah and Xavier’s mindset is slowly being crushed due to the constant pressures of relationships, fallen comrades and mentally illness being inhibited when put in a bloody warfare setting. Bloody warfare can leave characters to

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