In Richard Wagamese’s novel, Indian Horse, the protagonist Saul Indian Horse is taken to St. Jerome’s Indian Residential School where he is stripped of his identity. Saul is kidnapped by his grandmother and is taken to residential school. When he arrived he was somewhat accepted right away due to the fact he has a biblical name and he spoke English. However, this does not exempt him from the sufferings experienced as an indigenous child at St. Jerome’s residential school. On a daily basis, Saul witnessed multiple children suffer and be beaten or locked up. During this time, Saul needed to find a way to cope with this environment. To Saul's fortune (and misfortune), he is taken under the wing of Father Gaston Leboutilier who introduced him to hockey. While he introduced Saul …show more content…
Saul copes with the traumas induced by residential schools by playing hockey; not only does he find passion in the sport but he finds a safe, distracting haven in hockey. Years after St. Jerome’s closed down, Saul decides to go back and revisits his memories that happened when he was at St. Jerome’s. “I used the game to shelter me from seeing the truth, from having to face it every day,” Saul says. Later, after I was gone, the game kept me from remembering. As long as I could escape into it, I could fly away. Fly away and never have to land on the scorched earth of my boyhood.” (Wagamese 199) Saul is explaining here that he used the game to cover up and shelter him from what was really happening, he didn't want to revisit the truth of what really happened while he was at St. Jerome’s. He wanted a way to escape the reality he was in and wanted to run away from his past. As Saul lost his sight of the joy of playing hockey he once felt, he eventually replaced playing hockey with drinking and alcoholism to cope with his
A single point is similar between these two examples in the novels To Kill a Mockingbird & Indian Horse - the hardships that both blacks and Native Americans face simply because the colour of their skin differs from that of the “normal” whites. A point that makes these two races different from each other in regards to the racism that they endure, and have endured throughout history, is that the black race is headed towards hope and success for the future. An instance where this fact is proven, as Native Americans are not headed towards success, is highlighted in Indian Horse. Over the course of the novel, Saul Indian Horse has many positive and negative events occur. His emotions sky-rocket, but then soon after they plummet to the seemingly lowest they could go. As Saul progresses through the ranks of hockey, he also becomes greater familiar to the racism that abides in the world. Virgil assists Saul with the concept of “The Line”. The white race in this novel has a mindset that Native Americans have to earn the right to cross “The Line” (Wagamese 136). Soon after this realization, Saul begins to see more cases of “Lines” popping up around his life. “I started to see a line in every arena we played
Saul Indian Horse is an Ojibway child who grew up in a land which offered little contact with anyone belonging to a different kind of society until he was forced to attend a residential school in which children were being stripped away of their culture with the scope of assimilating them into a more “civilized” community. Saul’s childhood in the school, greatly pervaded by psychological abuse and emotional oppression, was positively upset once one of the priests, Father Leboutillier, introduced him to the world of hockey, which soon become his sole means of inclusion and identification, mental well-being and acknowledged self-worth in his life. It is though universally acknowledged how, for every medal, there are always two inevitably opposite
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.
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
Indian Horse is the perfect novel for any reader who does not see positivity in a bad situation. Richard Wagamese magnificently takes the reader into an emotional rollercoaster throughout their reading journey. Wagamese superbly proves the possibility of getting back up when knocked down, no matter how many times a person is knocked down. Despite the atrocious scenes that come up, Indian Horse is an optimistic novel because it shows that Aboriginal people have positivity and hope not only negatives, and that they are not just “lazy and hopeless”: a reader can see these positives through Saul’s hard work to improve and become the best hockey player he can be, his effort to ameliorate and return to being a “normal” member of society , and the
The novel “Indian Horse” by Richard Wagamese demonstrates the many conflicts that indigenous people encounter on a daily basis. This includes things such as, the dangers they face and how they feel the need to flee to nature, where they feel the most safe. Another major issue they face is being stripped of their culture, and forcibly made to believe their culture is wrong and they are less of a human for being brought up that way, it makes them feel unworthy. Finally, when one is being criticised for a hobby they enjoy due to their indigenous upbringing, they make himself lose interest and stop the hobby as it makes them different and provokes torment. People who are trying
Imagine being taken from your family at the age of six. Being referred to as a number rather than a name. Receiving brutal and cruel punishments for speaking the only language you were taught. How would it impact your life? Unfortunately, this is the reality for millions of Canada's Indigenous population. The nation of Canada is known to the world for being a country of peace, love and equality. Individuals originating from different nationalities immigrate to Canada, in hopes to improve their standard of living and escape the horrors of their country. Moreover, Canadians have not always been as supportive and welcoming of new ethnicities populating Canadian territory as they portray themselves to be today. Indian Horse is known to be an insightful
When individuals face obstacles in life, there is often two ways to respond to those hardships: some people choose to escape from the reality and live in an illusive world. Others choose to fight against the adversities and find a solution to solve the problems. These two ways may lead the individuals to a whole new perception. Those people who decide to escape may find themselves trapped into a worse or even disastrous situation and eventually lose all of their perceptions and hops to the world, and those who choose to fight against the obstacles may find themselves a good solution to the tragic world and turn their hopelessness into hopes. Margaret Laurence in her short story Horses of the Night discusses the idea of how individual’s responses
What do the following words or phrases have in common: “the last departure,”, “final curtain,” “the end,” “darkness,” “eternal sleep”, “sweet release,” “afterlife,” and “passing over”? All, whether grim or optimistic, are synonymous with death. Death is a shared human experience. Regardless of age, gender, race, religion, health, wealth, or nationality, it is both an idea and an experience that every individual eventually must confront in the loss of others and finally face the reality of our own. Whether you first encounter it in the loss of a pet, a friend, a family member, a neighbor, a pop culture icon, or a valued community member, it can leave you feeling numb, empty, and shattered inside. But, the world keeps turning and life continues. The late Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computers and of Pixar Animation Studios, in his 2005 speech to the graduating class at Stanford, acknowledged death’s great power by calling it “the single best invention of Life” and “Life’s great change agent.” How, in all its finality and accompanying sadness, can death be good? As a destination, what does it have to teach us about the journey?
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
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
Dorothy Johnson in “A Man Called Horse” writes about a young man who was born and raised in Boston. He lives in a gracious home under his grandmothers and grandfather’s loving care. For some reason, he is discontent. He leaves home to try to find out the reason for his discontent. Upon leaving he undergoes a change in status and opinion of himself and others. He begins a wealthy young man arrogant and spoiled, becomes a captive of Crow Indians- docile and humble, and emerges a man equal to all.
Exploring Identity and Cultural Navigation in the book The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. The main character in the story, Arnold Spirt Jr, also known as Junior, lives on a Spokane Indian reservation. He faces lots of different social environments. Some of which are good, and others not so much. As Junior navigates from his dominant Native American culture to the predominantly white culture at his new school, he faces many challenges that relate to his identity and culture.
Norman Cousins, an author and journalist for New York Post, once said, “The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we live”. Norman understood that death was not the worst thing that could have happened but the fact that when a loved one dies, we tend to let a little piece of our humanity die along with it. This is also evident in the novel. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. In the novel, Arnold goes on a quest to find hope and he had to leave the reservation but along his journey he experiences death of his loved ones and starts to lose hope of what it means to be an Indian.
Having a “niche” is important to many people, you have to have something that you are good at and makes you work at to better yourself everyday. When growing up in a small town that is agriculture based most people identify with a handful of industries that influence their work or they work directly with. Some industries are crop related, and others are animal related. The one that my mother got me involved with is the horse industry and I found that it was my niche. There are handfuls of advantages of growing up in the horse industry and there are misconceptions people have about it, overall my personal experiences have helped form a sense of positive identity of myself.