Analysis Of Richard Wagamese's 'Indian Horse'

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

Richard Wagamese, the author of Indian Horse, uses imagery to convey the emotional state of being of Saul. Wagamese uses detailed descriptive language to entail the peace and reminiscence Saul feels at God’s Lake to the reader. Wagamese writes Saul’s experience re-visiting God’s Lake on page two hundred four as “The smell in the air was rich and earthy, with a wisp of swamp and bog. Dying things and living things together. The air was filled with birdsong. I broke through the trees fifty yards from the foot of the cliff. As I knelt on the stone beach, gazing up at the cliff, the clouds as its upper edge moved as though it was a living being, breathing.” Saul goes back to God’s Lake to understand his roots and happy memories once again. He finds peace within himself and nature. Wagamese conveys Saul’s feelings of nostalgia and peace of being close to his peoples’ land by describing each breathtaking experience he had while taking in his surroundings. The reader feels as though they have been taken into the scene and are taking in the same awe of nature Saul is experiencing. Wagamese also uses imagery to describe the regretful feelings Saul has while departing from the Kellys’ home. On page one hundred seventy-nine Wagamese describes Saul’s regretful departure as “ I stood in the kitchen and looked out to where the boards of the backyard rink sat in the pale

The St. Jerome’s children of Indian Horse are innocent victims who suffer inexorably from threats, illness or suicide within both the Residential School and outside of it. Saul Indian Horse recalls seeing his schoolmates suffer right in front of his eyes. Saul describes ultimate acts to their suffering on page fifty-five “I saw kids die of tuberculosis, influenza, pneumonia and broken hearts at St. Jerome’s. I saw young boys and girls die standing on their own two feet. I saw bodies hung from the rafters on thin ropes.” These children are dying from maltreatment, malnutrition, neglect and oppression. If they do not die from an illness they must live on in misery and kill themselves; they just are not strong enough to move on. They cannot escape the pain of their maltreatment; their memories haunt their lives forever. The children who get out of the illness, death or beatings are not exempt from the religion and wrongful teachings that are imposed on them. Saul recalls these terrors on page eighty “We lived under constant threat. If it wasn’t the direct physical threat of beatings, the Iron Sister or vanishing, it was the dire threat of purgatory, hell and the everlasting agony their religion promised for the unclean, the heathen, the unsaved.” The Residential School System imposes a religion, discriminatory oppression and wrongful sanctions upon these children to push them