When we have to face challenges, people deal with those in different ways. Sometimes it is easy to just ignore these difficulties. However, to overcome an obstacle, we have to face and deal with it. In this book, “Indian Horse” by an Ojibway writer, Richard Wagamese presents this beautiful novel to the reader concerning a tragic life of a boy, Saul Indian Horse. The protagonist, hero of this novel was in a period and a place where his native sources were not acknowledged in the world. He experienced many catastrophes just to see how the society treats him without the help of anybody. By discovering Saul losing the ability to trust and being abandoned by his family members, causing himself harm and harden himself. Also, this affects the growth …show more content…
He had to experience the life of going to residential school at the young age where many horrific things happened to him by making him a go crazy. Also, Sauls loss of purity affects him in so many ways that lead him to harm himself. Racism and discrimination, since he was Indian, he had to feel the pain of being discriminated and segregated by nuns, priests, and white people. Also, Saul’s loss of purity compelled him by forcing him to solidify himself and to tolerate the horrendous things that happened to him. Therefore, by observing this affects, the reader can discover the conflicts in which the main character struggles against his external “demon.”
First of all, Saul Indian Horse’s life is set apart by disaster. His parents are residential school survivors, and his mom is crushed by the experience at the school. When he was eight years old, his parents abandoned him with his grandma. When it comes to the children, they all need someone in their life who they can love and trust without getting it shattered. However, for Saul, he never got that chance. So, he never had an opportunity to experience the love, and there was nobody to make him feel that way. After his
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He was getting discriminated at the school all the time. So, his loss of integrity caused him in a way where he harms himself. He used alcohol as an escape from the rough time he was having. Saul made an imprudent choice, and it resulted in him trying to harm himself. Saul ran away from his troubles, and he chose not to respond to any of them with the support of alcohol. When Saul was eighteen years old, and he had left to Manitouwadge. He was wandering around, seeking for a job in the town. At that moment, Saul starts thinking, “I'm not sure how I started drinking. but I know that when I'm always drunk, the noise of roaring in my stomach calmed me down” (pg 180-181, Chapter 20, Indian Horse). This is the first time; he reveals to the reader that he has been drinking. He thought this would be the best idea to get away from his real, mature feelings and emotions but using it as his escape didn't work out and turned out as a terrible choice. He didn't even try to solve any of his problems. Instead, he was walking away from them. Finally, it ended up him trying to pretend to be someone who he wasn't. If Saul only sought after people who adored him other than alcohol, he would have been liberated from his past that was cutting him down. His whole life was surrounded by the racism and which caused him in a way where he causes himself harm. At the school, Saul’s talent that
Over the past two centuries, First Nations people have been oppressed by the Canadian society and continue to live under racism. The struggles, injustices, prejudice, and discrimination has played a significant role in the construction and impact of how they are treated and viewed in the modern society. Saul Indian Horse from Richard Wagamese's "Indian Horse" and Chanie Wenjack from Gord Downie's "The Stranger" are the perfect examples of how the belief that First Nations were inferior to the Europeans impacted the Aboriginal generations. However, both of the characters can be compared and contrasted by the following ways. As they both go through the breakdown of family bonds and the traumatic sufferings of residential schools, but they differ
The Essay, I have chosen to read from is ReReading America was An Indian Story by Roger Jack. The topic of this narrative explores the life of an Indian boy who grows up away from his father in the Pacific Northwest. Roger Jack describes the growing up of a young Indian boy to a man, who lives away from his father. Roger demonstrates values of the Indian culture and their morals through exploration of family ties and change in these specific ties. He also demonstrates that growing up away from one’s father doesn’t mean one can’t be successful in life, it only takes a proper role model, such as the author provides for the young boy.
At the beginning of the story Horses of the Night, Chris, who lives at Shallow Creek with a poor living condition, is introduced as a distant cousin of the narrator Vanessa. Since there is no high schools at Shallow Creek and as Chris’s dream of becoming a civil engineer, these two facts push him to seek for new opportunities in Manawaka. Though he is still undertaking various inconveniences and hopelessness while he studies in Manawaka, such as Grandfather Connor’s disdain sights toward him and lacking of financial support, he acts indifferently to respond to Grandfather Connor’s attitudes and speaks out his “great expectations” with assurance, as if his future of
Stories are much more than just ink placed in clean rows on paper or dialogues that travel through air columns. All stories transform worldly experiences into sources of inspiration and perspicuity and Saul Indian Horse’s story is no exception. In Richard Wagamese’s novel, Indian Horse, Saul Indian Horse explains the events that have resulted in him receiving treatment for alcoholism at a rehab centre. Readers are exposed to the former hockey player’s moments of triumph, failure, and everything that falls in between. Saul mentions in his story how a leisure pursuit like hockey granted him temporary freedom and happiness from his sorrow-filled life. Saul’s example can inspire First Nations individuals to remain resilient in the face of adversity.
“But we reservation Indians don’t get to realize our dreams. We don’t get those chances.” (p. 13) In The Absolutely True Diary of A Part Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, Junior, the narrator, is an Indian teenage boy living on a reservation, where no one's dreams or ideas are heard. The Indians on the reservation feel hopeless because they are isolated and disenfranchised. Junior learns how to cope with his hopelessness and breaks through the hopeless reservation life to find his dreams. Examining his journey provides important examples for the reader.
Indian Horse is a novel by Richard Wagamese that beautifully explores the idea of family, and what it means to have people around you that make you feel at home. The reader is bombarded with an overwhelming sense of family and betrayal in the first few pages of the novel. As Richard Wagamese continues to write, one is able to see how safe Saul Indian Horse felt with his biological family, and he also shows how lost he felt without their love when he was taken to the Residential School. The school he was brought to was drained of all consensual love the moment it was open, and continued to fill the children with horrible feelings the entire time they were there. Indian Horse was unable to really feel as though he still had family while he was in the
In the introduction, Hämäläinen introduces how Plains Indians horse culture is so often romanticized in the image of the “mounted warrior,” and how this romanticized image is frequently juxtaposed with the hardships of disease, death, and destruction brought on by the Europeans. It is also mentioned that many historians depict Plains Indians equestrianism as a typical success story, usually because such a depiction is an appealing story to use in textbooks. However, Plains Indians equestrianism is far from a basic story of success. Plains equestrianism was a double-edged sword: it both helped tribes complete their quotidian tasks more efficiently, but also gave rise to social issues, weakened the customary political system, created problems between other tribes, and was detrimental to the environment.
Many Aboriginal children across Canada are distressed as most of them have difficulty finding their inner quality and enhancements in life. This is visible in the life of Saul Indian Horse, the main protagonist in Richard Wagamese’s “Indian Horse”. Saul has many struggles in his life that he had to overcome, He could have come down a negative path, but instead learns from them. Saul’s personal growth is a result of overcoming racism, surviving residential school and his passion for hockey.
The narrator from The Toughest Indian in the World starts off my withholding his struggles with self- identification. Only to then have it exposed in a defining moment when he asks the fighter to stay the night with him. The repercussions of his overnight visit with the fighter serve as an unfamiliar course of action. Initially the narrator reserves many of his natural inclinations as a sign of struggle with his self- identity. This can be demonstrated through “I almost protested, but decided against it.”
Both Saul Indian Horse and Winston Smith use writing as a means of survival from repression. In Indian Horse, Saul uses writing as a means of seeing what made him turn away from the pain of his rape and cease repressing its happening; for him survive and live on with his life. Saul writes memoirs to find the hidden answers of why he turned to violence and alcoholism and using them to break free of the cycle. From pages two to three Saul says “They say I can’t understand where I’m going if I don’t understand where I’ve been. The answers are within me, according to them. By telling our stories, hardcore drunks like me can set ourselves free from the bottle and the life that took us there …. So Moses gave me permission to write things down. So
Many naive people, like myself for example, would see a book titled The Indian Lawyer, by James Welch, for the first time thinking that it must be about Indians with horses and bows and arrows trying to get revenge, but this novel written by James Welch is nothing of the sort. It is about the modern Indian, in today’s modern world, with modern problems, but written in a unique way. The book is written in many different characters points of views, and it adds a tremendous amount of detail and understanding to the story. In this paper I will discuss three of the main characters points of view and why this helped illuminate the story even more. By telling the story through multiple points of views, which gave more insight, it showed the reader
In “The Truth about Stories”, Thomas King, demonstrate connection between the Native storytelling and the authentic world. He examines various themes in the stories such as; oppression, racism, identity and discrimination. He uses the creational stories and implies in to the world today and points out the racism and identity issues the Native people went through and are going through. The surroundings shape individuals’ life and a story plays vital roles. How one tells a story has huge impact on the listeners and readers. King uses sarcastic tone as he tells the current stories of Native people and his experiences. He points out to the events and incidents such as the government apologizing for the colonialism, however, words remains as they are and are not exchanged for actions. King continuously alerts the reader about taking actions towards change as people tend to be ignorant of what is going around them. At the end people give a simple reason that they were not aware of it. Thus, the author constantly reminds the readers that now they are aware of the issue so they do not have any reason to be ignorant.
“Don’t you read the papers? I’m the Rampaging Redskin.” (Wagamese, 165) This quote indicates how the the Residential School system is starting to effect Saul’s mentality that he is inferior than the non-Indigenous population. In addition, the non-Indigenous population portray offensive racial slurs against the Aboriginal population. “Thirteen’s good for an Indian.” (Wagamese, 89) This quote states how society degraded Indians and consider them to be useless. Discrimination towards the Natives in Canada becomes the leading issue that Saul results into his tragic lifestyle. “We don’t eat with Indians.” (Wagamese, 133) This quote is a representation of the discrimination Saul is forced to endure and demonstrates the lack of education of non-Indigenous people. Consequently, the prevalence of racism in Indian Horse sets as a perfect example of the discrimination many Canadians are experiencing in today’s society.
Adjusting to another culture is a difficult concept, especially for children in their school classrooms. In Sherman Alexie’s, “Indian Education,” he discusses the different stages of a Native Americans childhood compared to his white counterparts. He is describing the schooling of a child, Victor, in an American Indian reservation, grade by grade. He uses a few different examples of satire and irony, in which could be viewed in completely different ways, expressing different feelings to the reader. Racism and bullying are both present throughout this essay between Indians and Americans. The Indian Americans have the stereotype of being unsuccessful and always being those that are left behind. Through Alexie’s negativity and humor in his essay, it is evident that he faces many issues and is very frustrated growing up as an American Indian. Growing up, Alexie faces discrimination from white people, who he portrays as evil in every way, to show that his childhood was filled with anger, fear, and sorrow.
Louise Erdrich’s short story “American horse” is a literary piece written by an author whose works emphasize the American experience for a multitude of different people from a plethora of various ethnic backgrounds. While Erdrich utilizes a full arsenal of literary elements to better convey this particular story to the reader, perhaps the two most prominent are theme and point of view. At first glance this story seems to portray the struggle of a mother who has her son ripped from her arms by government authorities; however, if the reader simply steps back to analyze the larger picture, the theme becomes clear. It is important to understand the backgrounds of both the protagonist and antagonists when analyzing theme of this short story. Albetrine, who is the short story’s protagonist, is a Native American woman who characterizes her son Buddy as “the best thing that has ever happened to me”. The antagonist, are westerners who work on behalf of the United States Government. Given this dynamic, the stage is set for a clash between the two forces. The struggle between these two can be viewed as a microcosm for what has occurred throughout history between Native Americans and Caucasians. With all this in mind, the reader can see that the theme of this piece is the battle of Native Americans to maintain their culture and way of life as their homeland is invaded by Caucasians. In addition to the theme, Erdrich’s usage of the third person limited point of view helps the reader understand the short story from several different perspectives while allowing the story to maintain the ambiguity and mysteriousness that was felt by many Natives Americans as they endured similar struggles. These two literary elements help set an underlying atmos...