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Onahaashiwew: Sniper
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Three Day Road, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Isolation vs. Community
Racism and Assimilation
Language and Storytelling
Nature, War, and Survival
Summary
Analysis
As Xavier’s unit marches down Ypres Road to the next place they will be billeted, he notices that “socializing now isn’t as easy” without Sean Patrick. Sean Patrick had been “a kind of bridge” between Xavier and the men. Elijah spends most of his time with Grey Eyes. “He likes to test himself,” Xavier thinks. “Elijah spends time with Grey Eyes because he likes the pull of the medicine.”
Elijah isn’t “testing himself” by spending time with Grey Eyes; he is spending time with Grey Eyes to get morphine. Elijah has already surrendered to “the pull of the medicine,” but Xavier refuses to see it. As a result, Elijah isolates himself from Xavier and his culture, further allowing the windigo to enter. Xavier too is doubly isolated. Elijah ignores him, and his racist unit alienates him (Xavier is a “brown ghost”), further isolating him.
Themes
Later, Xavier wakes Elijah in the tent he shares with Grey Eyes. “Wake up. It is important,” Xavier says. He tells Elijah he has “made an important realization […] about the German sniper.” The bullet that killed Sean Patrick “was not shot by someone level with him or even above him,” Xavier says. The bullet had entered below his Adam’s apple and exited at the base of his skull. “How do we know it wasn’t just a ricochet?” Elijah asks. No, Xavier says. The Germans use copper bullets and chances of ricochet are slim. The shot had come from below them. “And the only place that he can do that from is “no man’s land,” Xavier says.
Xavier later finds and kills the German sniper, which again proves that he is the better shot, but Xavier is also the one who figures out where the sniper shot from. This implies that not only is Xavier a better shot than Elijah, but smarter, too. Yet Elijah frequently makes Xavier feel stupid because he doesn’t read or write English and calls him a “heathen.” Because Xavier doesn’t conform to white ways like Elijah does, it is assumed that Elijah is both smarter and a better shot, but neither are true.
Themes
Back on the line, McCaan gives Xavier and Elijah permission to spend extra time scoping out “no man’s land.” They sit silently for hours, completely hidden and still, watching. They see plenty of soldiers, “but they are dead, all of them. Everything out there is dead.” Elijah breaks the silence. “Did you know that I tried the medicine, the morphine, on that ship to England?” he asks. Xavier says nothing. “Grey Eyes is to blame,” Elijah says, beginning his story. Elijah doesn’t keep any stories from Xavier. “It is easy, hearing his voice,” Xavier says, “for me to be in Elijah’s stories so that I live them myself.”
Xavier’s comment that listening to Elijah’s stories is like “living them” himself reflects the power of storytelling in Anishnabe culture, but again it appears that Xavier is wrong about Elijah not keeping things from him. He has been living in a trench with Xavier for months now, but this is the first time Elijah tells this particular story. Surely Elijah has plenty of opportunities to tell Xavier about the morphine, but he doesn’t because he knows that Xavier will be angry and disappointed.
Themes
When Elijah and Xavier left for the war, Elijah was terribly seasick on the boat to England. Grey Eyes found him on the deck in the cold night air. “You’re sick,” Grey Eyes said. “You need medicine.” Grey Eyes had several vials of medicine but no needles, so he had Elijah cut his arm and stole a syringe from the infirmary when he went for stitches. Grey Eyes injected Elijah in the bend of his elbow, and Elijah began to “float away.” He floated over the officers’ quarters and the sleeping soldiers, and even over the horses in the belly of the ship.
Here, Elijah squarely blames Grey Eyes for his addition. Elijah certainly was in no shape to protest this first time, but Grey Eyes presumably didn’t need to inject him after that. This also proves that Elijah was taking morphine long before he admits it. He tells Xavier that the morphine made him “float away,” which he has already told Xavier he also does over the battlefields, giving him an advantage in combat.
Themes
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“That was the one and only time I experienced the morphine,” Elijah says and looks across “no man’s land.” In the distance, he sees the bloated carcass of a horse. “I’m going to check the accuracy of my rifle,” he says. He shoots and the horse “disintegrates.” Xavier notices movement near the horse, about fifteen feet away, and then a bullet hits the ground between them, showering Elijah’s eyes with dirt. Xavier’s rifle is “steady,” and he pulls the trigger. He waits and looks for movement but knows “that there won’t be any.” It was the “phantom sniper” who had killed Sean Patrick. “He was hunting us too,” Elijah says.
Elijah is lying about the morphine, and he immediately diverts Xavier’s attention to the horse, away from his obvious lie. Elijah’s unnecessary shooting flushes out the sniper, though, which is their objective. This is the first time Xavier shoots a man. He has thrown bombs in the vicinity of Germans and assumes that some have died, but this is the first time Xavier eyes a man through the scope and pulls the trigger. This form of killing is much more personal, and it deeply bothers his conscience.
Themes
