Analysis Of Indian Horse By Richard Wagamese

Scott Russell Sanders’ “Under the Influence” is about a family growing up with alcoholism, mental and physical abuse. When Sanders was very young, he didn’t recognize that his father was an alcoholic, but as he grew older, he saw the bloodshot eyes, hiding alcohol, the deceptions, and the dual personalities of an alcoholic. “My father drank. He drank as a gut-punched boxer gasps for breath, as a starving dog gobbles food—compulsively, secretly, in pain and trembling.” (215). Sanders story starts at the end, where his father dies from alcoholism. The turmoil and fear this family suffered because of their father’s alcoholism, is a story a lot of families are familiar with.

Grandparents shows you the way of life, the morals, the values and the culture. This is what Naomi, grandmother of Saul always taught her family in the novel “Indian Horse”. Richard Wagamese, tells his story through his novel ‘Indian Horse’ in the hope to heal and reclaim his life. In the novel, the main character Saul faces tough circumstances which shattered him completely and make him feel worthless. In Richard Wagamese’s novel “Indian Horse” the relation of a grandson with his grandmother shows the importance of elders in person’s childhood. While stating his life story he reveals his grandmother’s importance in his childhood, how she always taught him how to be connected with his cultural values and to do things in the way their

Theodore Fontaine is one of the thousands of young aboriginal peoples who were subjected through the early Canadian system of the Indian residential schools, was physically tortured. Originally speaking Ojibwe, Theodore relates the encounters of a young man deprived of his culture and parents, who were taken away from him at the age of seven, during which he would no longer be free to choose what to say, how to say it, with whom to live and even what culture to embrace. Theodore would then spend the next twelve years undoing what had been done to him since birth, and the rest of his life attempting a reversal of his elementary education culture shock, traumatization, and indoctrination of ethnicity and Canadian supremacy. Out of these experiences, he wrote the “Broken Circle: The Dark Legacy of Indian Residential Schools-A Memoir” and in this review, I considered the Heritage House Publishing Company Ltd publication.

The many beatings, suicides and sexual molestations shattered many children’s human spirit and created a sense of life that wasn’t worth living. “When your innocence is stripped from you, when your people are denigrated, when the family you came from is denounced and your tribal ways and rituals are pronounced backward, primitive, savage, you come to see yourself as less than human. That is hell on earth, that sense of unworthiness. That's what they inflicted on us.”(Pg.81) The quote represents how they were stripped from everything they had ever know, such as their language, rituals, traditions and even choice of food. Over a short period of time, the beatings and threats belittled the children and instilled them with continuous fear. When taken all together, the horror of attending this Residential School stripped not only Saul’s, but all the children’s innocence, traditions and identity.

Furthermore, Downey’s apt use of pathos, or emotional appeals, draws readers in and triggers an emotional response in them, keeping them engaged for the duration of the essay. To expand, he uses blunt phrases like, “permanent loss” (445) and “distant, angry aliens, lacking emotional bonds” (446) to create a severe impact on readers. Also, stirring examples of “descent into alcohol, drugs, and prostitution” (445) and “children committing suicide” (446) illustrate for readers the acute level of damage and suffering that Aboriginal victims experienced. Downey’s use of evocative and graphic imagery in his recounts of “residential schools” (446) and the physical, “emotional and sexual abuse” (447) that specific victims endured elucidates the turmoil and anguish felt by victims of the ‘Sixties Scoop’ in general. As such, this technique fully immerses readers in his essay. Downey creates both a sense of compassion and guilt in his readers through his mention of children who were “enslaved,

The residential school and other negative influences cause Saul to lose his identity. First of all, at St. Jerome’s they would constantly crush the

“Alcohol addiction stunts the spiritual, emotional and mental growth of a person”~Anonymous. Sherman Alexie’s novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, is a book based off the author’s teenage life. The novel is about a poor 14 year old named Junior who faced numerous challenges in his life. Junior has experienced bullying, he was called a traitor for following his dreams, got in a huge fight with his best friend and lost three very important people in his life because of alcohol. Fortunately in the end, Junior got through the pain and lived on but he learned many lessons. One of the lessons Junior learned was that the fall into addiction, in this situation alcohol, leads to a great deal of misery for the individual and those

Isabelle Knockwood’s novel Out of The Depths shines a light on Residential Schools in Canada through the first hand accounts of twenty-seven survivors who attended the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School. Although Knockwood’s compilation of accounts are all from students of one residential school, the treatments and experiences echo the sentiments of students and authors over a much greater area. The affects of Residential Schools have had a lasting impact, affecting communities and individual generations later. Knockwood’s novel is very unique because it voices not only the harsh realities we associate with residential schools, but also personal experiences of appreciation for what the school(s) did. It will be interesting to look at

The kidnap of Saul into the residential school system is a product of the superiority complex that exists. The belief that the indigenous people were inferior to the whites is what drove Saul to the school in the first place. Meanwhile, at the school Saul is taught to suppress his culture and values. Saul accompanied with thousands of other young aboriginal children are assimilated into the white culture. The main goal of the school system was to “[try] to remove [their] skin” (Wagamese 44). In this text, Saul compares his first time being bathed at St. Jeromes to

Young Indigenous children from all over Canada were snatched from their homes, taken from their families, and placed in residential schools that would ruin these children and bring out the feeling of pain that would last their entire life. In Richard Wagamese novel Indian horse, Saul Indian Horse, one of the many victims of the sixties scoop was taken as a young boy, where he was abused mentally, physically and emotionally at St. Jerome's residential school. This school would inflict pain that would last forever and has a terrible aftermath on his life that puts him in a long and difficult healing process he endured to turn his life around from the distractions he used to hide from the pain. Richard Wagamese tells the story of Indian Horse through the eyes of Saul Indian Horse to demonstrate the feelings he endures during the story for the readers better understanding of the character.

The spontaneity and the unpredictable nature of human life makes the sustainability of human livelihood a challenging task. In the novel Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese, Saul detaches himself from others and experiences racism as well as isolation from his friends and teammates while playing hockey. These traumatic experiences cause him tremendous amounts of emotional pain, making it impossible for him to keep a job and compels him to become an alcoholic.

Saul had his entire way of life taken away from him when he got taken to St. Jeromes Residential School, and the land helps reconnects him with his Aboriginal culture. During his time at St. Jeromes, Saul seldomly practiced tradition due to it being banned. Although, one time “during some rare unsupervised time, a dozen of [kids] escaped to [...] a

In the book Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson, the main character, Lisamarie, has to go through a series of traumatic events. However, these events play a crucial role in understanding the message of the novel. First Nations communities are still struggling with the aftermath of residential schools. This has led to a loss of culture. Lisamarie faces the death of many family members, and sexual assault which help her get in touch with her supernatural side. However, because she has grown up in a Haisla family that doesn’t practice a lot of its culture, she doesn’t know how to accept that part of herself. Several members of Lisamarie’s family attended residential schools which forces her to face intergenerational trauma. The author uses traumatic events that revolve around first nations communities to make the reader aware of the struggles that still affect first nation cultures.

“It hurts to lose any of them [to alcoholism] because Indians kind of see ballplayers as saviors” (52). In The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight In Heaven, by Sherman Alexie, alcoholism takes on a salient -- yet disastrous -- role in regards to the success of Native Americans. In the short story “A Train Is An Order of Occurrence Designed to Lead to Some Result,” Samuel Builds-the-Fire, the first in his community to successfully leave the reservation and move to a city named Spokane, struggles with handling the multitudes of devastating news he has received throughout his day. Upon eagerly waking up thirty minutes early to attend his job as a hotel maid, a profession he had both enthusiastically and arduously worked for, Samuel gets -- for

Horse have been a friend to men for over 4,000 years. Many of the horse are a big thinking in a lot of different cultures and they have played a act in the wars that we have had. Horse are on the herbivore diet and the average weight of a horse is 120 to 2200 lbs.