Analyzing Métis's Short Story 'Joseph Justice'

Métis are descendant of half Natives and Europeans, most of them are half Cree and French, which they defines themselves as their own group. Their looks are different from the Aboriginals, they look like one of Europeans, but inside that body, they have their own culture and language. In the past, many Métis felt left out because Aboriginals and Europeans did not consider them as their own kind. Once they created their own culture, they felt proud of their heritage and language. The short story “Joseph Justice” is about a Métis man try to justify his stolen belonging of beaver pelts, guns by going court battle after court battle to get his stuff. In the “Joseph Justice” , author uses many writing techniques such as diction, figure of speech,

tone, mood, foreshadowing, satire, irony, dialect and dialogue to make readers to identify strong Métis voice. It showed convincing Métis voice of stubborn, determination, strength, pride, and respect. Voice in the “Joseph Justice” is a part of Canadian identity, it becomes a strong represented voice for the identity of Métis due to combination of well written structure with many witting techniques.

One of important technique that author used on this literature was the tone. He was able to convince us that Métis voice were pride, strong, stubborn and determination. “Joseph Justice” was carefully written and fashioned with using carefully chosen word, and sentence structure that would later on shape the tone. In the literature’s tone was calm, playful, sarcastic, and humorous, this elements help out carry Métis voice that we would feel during the reading. The Métis voice of pride and respect was shown when story began to talk about Battle of Batoche to Louis Riel, Gabriel Dumont and Michael Dumas. For example, “oh Gabe him, he die before give hisself up” (pg. 93) is one of quote reveals Métis voice of determination, stubborn and pride. To evaluate more, the tone his used was different, it was clam and more playful tone suggesting that English may won the Battle, they still did not defeat people of Métis. Another example is “Louis him, he was different…I guess you can say he was a spirit man” (pg. 94), the part only revealed calm tone. It suggest that it is their way of saying they take pride of Louis Riel. Métis voice of determination, pride and stubborn was shown from the tone of story, but also he created tone by using sentence structure that would reflect Métis voice.

Diction was the most important technique that was used to convince identity of Métis voice.

The last line of first paragraph explained how the writer use sentence structure to form tone that would reflect Métis voice. Tone is reflected by diction, and without it would be like body without bone. He used words that consider as slangs and shortcut words that most Native American use and pronounce. Such as “hisself” (pg. 93) for “himself”, “an” (101) for “and”, “dah” (pg. 101) for “the”, “hees” (pg. 107) for “his” and so on. These word made Métis voice of determination, strength, pride, stubborn, respect more convincing to readers and accept as their identity. One of quote example is when we read about “You know dah big fight at Batoche? Dah one we fight with Anglais?” (pg. 92), this show also shows how pride they are having big fight at the Batoche. Writer also used the word “Anglais” (pg. 92), which makes majority Canadian readers immediately understand that it is a French word for “English”. As for the Métis, this is most important, their language which they calls it “Mitchif” was originated from French and Cree. This was made when the Métis mixed French and Cree language together. Another addition example would be “he ssen him to Angleterre to get hees edjication” (pg. 106), when it talk about “Jimmy” or James

Isbister.

Dialogue and dialect was also used to describe the Métis voice. The most important example for dialect would be “dat Anglais general” (pg.95), “cause Joseph him”(pg. ), and “maybe we lose dah was but one man he win cause him he believe hisself an he don give up” (pg 107)