Identity In Richard Wagamese's Indian Horse

Saul,taken forcibly from his family when he 's sent to st.jerome 's residential school,Salvation comes for a while through him as a hockey player.In the 1960’s he battles racism and displacement and almost ends up dying.

Identity is a prize possession that defines the foundation of a character's values, beliefs and language. In the story Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese, Saul faces many disheartening challenges in understanding who he is and where he belongs. Both, the priests and nuns at St.Jerome's and the ‘white’ people who live in Canada negatively influence Saul’s ethnicity as an Indian Horse. The identity of the aboriginal is at great risk and is being impacted within the multiple settings of the residential school and outside world.

One hundred thousand kids died at residential schools in Canada related to diseases. Six thousand kids died related to abuse. Richard Wagamese masterpiece, Indian Horse is about a boy named Saul Indian Horse an Indigenous Canadian who balances between the horrors of residential school and the joy of hockey. Saul become an alcoholic whose life is falling apart. The power of love, family, and power of spirit helps him recover.

For one thing, Saul turns to the books and language that St. Jeromes wants to teach the students, so he can immerse himself in studying and escape from what he is going through. Saul explains that “in my chrysalis of silence I turned to Zhaunagush books and language, finding in them a path beyond the astringent smell of the school...The nuns and the priests took me for studious and encouraged me to vanish even further into my self-imposed exile.” (49) Instead of acknowledging the horrors that he faces everyday, he studies the “Zhaunagush” books and language, and ignores his problems and feelings as he concentrates about one specific topic that does not cross the boundaries of his mental health. Moreover, Saul first begins his passion of hockey as an enjoyable pastime to distract himself from the loneliness he feels. As Saul realizes what hockey means to him, he thinks “I knew that loneliness would be dispelled by the sheen of the rink in the sunlight, the feel of cold air on my face, the sound of a wooden stick shuffling frozen rubber.” (73) With no support, he turned to hockey as a crutch because the joy of the sport is enough to ease his mind and to let him forget about what he faces for a little while. Also, when Saul reminisces of the past, he desperately seeks an answer about the scars left on him,

Saul,taken forcibly from his family when he 's sent to St.jerome 's residential school,Salvation comes for a while through him as a hockey player.In the 1960’s Saul battles racism and displacement and almost ends up dying.

The thoughts of adversity like being beaten at residential school and racism he faced when he was playing hockey, all show that residential school gave him a dark memory and Saul was eager to become a stronger person. In the whole novel, Saul has experienced many painful experienced. He was not accepted and was discriminated against by white people. This novel should be required reading for every

The first time was when Saul was a young teenager and just left St. Jerome’s Indian Residential School, he stayed with the Kellys so he could pursue a career in hockey. Saul felt accepted and loved by the Kellys, stating that “Fred and Marth Kelly were good to me . . . and Virgil and I grew close. He was my greatest ally” (114). This relationship shaped Saul for the rest of his life since it was the first familial relationship he had since he lost his family except for his relationship with Father Gustav Leboutilier. Saul had to leave the Kellys and Manitouwadge because he felt his anger take over him and needed to be alone. Saul returned shortly after he discovered he was repressing his memory of the rapes by Father Leboutilier. The Kellys comforted Saul and told him about their own experiences with residential schools, they also encouraged him to try and find forgiveness (208-210). The Kellys had lived a successful and positive life after their time in residential schools and this helped inspire Saul to settle down and try to make a positive impact. The novel is resolved with Saul playing hockey with the Kellys and other inhabitants of Manitouwadge and Saul tells Virgil Kelly that he “always felt most at home here” referring to Manitouwadge (217). The Kellys and Saul are a true family, there are no ulterior motives and no barrier between

The 60s, a time most people remember to be full of partying, overrun with tacky Afros, high Hippies, and cheap Lava Lamps. However, even in the happiest of times, no matter how peaceful the world seems, you can always count on a minority being mistreated, which during the 60s was happening right here in Canada, specifically in Residential Schools. These institutions were designed to assimilate native children into Canadian society, but in reality, they more often than not became host to the mutilation of the native people’s rights, all in the name of the gods that every man, women, and child of Canada worshiped. Richard Wagamese’s book Indian Horse focuses on this aspect of Canadian history. The story follows the life of Saul Allen, an Ojibwa

I chose to read the memoir The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian for my summary assignment. The memoir, written by Sherman Alexie, tells of the author’s childhood experience growing up on an Indian reservation while attending an all-white school. We first learn about what life is like for Arnold, or Junior on the reservation. He is often picked on by the other Indians because of his many medical problems. Determined to not let anyone belittle him, Junior makes the brave decision to get his education from an all-white school. This courage comes with a price though. His people now see him as a traitor, and he struggles to find a balance between his new school and his reservation. Finding comfort in his original cartoons, Junior manages

In the world, we live in today, finding your identity is difficult. Many people want to be either “this” or “that”, race and ethnicity wise, but never really stop to appreciate their true self and accept who they are. In the novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie, Arnold struggles with feeling like an outsider while living on a reservation and attending Reardan, a predominately white school off the reservation. The transition is new however, it creates a difficult but exciting time for him, meeting new people and experiencing a different side of life. Arnold deals with dueling identities between Native Americans and Reardan which results in the difficult journey to acquire his sense of self only to come to the realization that he is a proud Native American who can have just as many options as people who live outside of the reservation.

Everyone has a cultural identity, although sometimes we have a hard time accepting them. Sherman Alexie’s The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is about a brain damaged Indian boy named Junior who lives in a Spokane Indian Reservation and decides to make a move that will alter his life and the lives around him drastically. One thing about Junior is that he loves to draw, he loves to draw so much Sherman states, “ So I draw because I feel like it might be my only real chance to escape the reservation”(6). Junior believes just because he is Indian doesn’t mean he has to follow the same path other Indians, including his parents, followed. With the help of his family he tries to make a better life for himself. In order to change his life Junior does something no other person has done before. Since he is the first Indian to make a change, many of his town people don’t agree with his decision. As a result, Junior goes through many challenges, some harder than others and no matter what, once he starts his journey, he cant go back. Junior doesn’t want to completely accept his cultural identity, he wants more than what surrounds him so he must challenge himself and do the unspeakable, although everything comes with a price.

The construction of identity in Native American literature tends to be contingent on the trope of alienation. Protagonists then must come to terms with their exile/alienated condition, and disengage from the world in order to regain a sense of their pre-colonial life. In utilizing the plight of the American Indian, authors expose the effects decolonization and how individuals must undergo a process of recovery. Under these circumstances, characters are able reclaim knowledge of a tribal self that had been distorted by years of oppression. Through Welch’s Winter in the Blood and The Heartsong of Charging Elk, and Alexie’s Flight, we can see how the protagonists suffer from the tensions of living on the margins of conflicting societies, and

Protagonist Saul, along with the rest of the native students, is taken from their home at an early age. His parents leave him after his brother Ben dies of Tuberculosis, and he stays with his grandmother until she too, dies. It is ironic that the reserve from which Saul comes, nestled along the border of Manitoba and “the rugged spine” ( Wagamese 1) of Ontario with “the rivers that served was our roads” ( Wagamese 1) is both the source of so

In the novel, Indian Horse, traditions and knowledge of one's father and the fathers before them is lost by the actions of the Canadian Government and the “White Man”, or more commonly known as the European. This was accomplished with the development of residential schools and institutional

Cultural differences, stereotypes and especially a history of bad blood between two vastly different nationalities can lead to a lot of conflict and a large gap in communication and understanding, a prominent example of this being the case between the so-called “whites” and the Native peoples of North America. As a Native American teenager living in poverty on a reservation, Junior, the protagonist in Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, believes in this concept for the vast majority of the novel as he struggles to find hope and discover his own identity. He had always thought of the white kids that attend the school within the rich farm town of Reardan as full of hope and everything else that he could have ever wanted. Even when he made the decision to transfer there himself, he finds that there is an ever-present social and financial gap between him and his peers that hinders him from truly belonging. However, this view changes after his social studies teacher, Mrs. Jeremy, implicitly mocks him for his absence despite knowing the reason being his family members’ recent deaths, and his friends and peers respond to this by dropping their textbooks and abandoning her class. This moment is significant as it helps Junior gain some hope and a more positive insight on the rift between whites and Indians, since he realizes that he is being accepted by his peers.