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THE SHIFTING SITES OF IDENTITY NEGOTIATION IN BOYDEN’S THREE Day ROAD
Escaping prescribed identity formulations through the acts and processes
of ethnic choice and through reconnecting with Indigeneity (tribal or pan¬
Indian) is a central issue in the novel. Boyden offers the reader an insight into
the spectrum of conscious and unconscious choices regarding one’s ethnic
identity and relation to Indigeneity in Three Day Road. Actually, the two pals,
Elijah and Xavier exemplify the very choice, its manifestations and impacts
that Native Americans and mixed blood persons make every single day.
In that regard, the novel seems to play out the same dilemmas that Sergeant
Nathan Marx and Sheldon Grossbart present in Philip Roth’s “Defender of
Faith". In a telling situation, their superior expresses his disapproval of
Grossbart’s unique ways of keeping tradition, while Marx acts more in line
with expectations, regardless of his Jewish traditions, and the question is,
what kind of success can validate one or the other attitude? In the military
context, the majority of superiors seem to praise more the one who is ready to
fight and forget about ethnic pride than the one keeping traditions:
Look, Grossbart, Marx here is a good man, a goddam hero. When you were sitting
on your sweet ass in high school, Sergeant Marx was killing Germans. Who does
more for the Jews, you by throwing up over a lousy piece of sausage, a piece of
firstcut meat—or Marx by killing those Nazi bastards? If 1 was a Jew, Grossbart, I’d
kiss this man’s feet. He’s a goddam hero, you know that? And he eats when we give
him. Why do you have to cause trouble is what I want to know!”
In Three Day Road, Elijah has a similar attitude to Marx: a bit opportunistic,
truly adaptable to the way and expectations of the majority, without any
concerns about losing touch with his authentic ethnic origins, and certainly
placing survival above ethical considerations. Xavier, however, is similar
in attitude to Grossbart: on the one hand, ethnic and humanistic concerns
do trouble him in the army and he often feels challenged by not fitting the
white man’s Indian stereotype, while on the other hand, he revitalizes himself
through tribal spirituality, just like Grossbart does when practicing his
Yiddish rituals.
The etimology of Xavier’s name refers to his role: he is a bird and he feeds
Elijah, who is always hungry” for survival, both physical and spiritual. I believe
that this symbolic bird status is the embodiment of his effort to reconnect
with ancestral ties, “the old way” of praying in Cree,”® though such prayers are
26 Philip Roth, Defender of Faith, in Nina Baym — Ronald Gottesman — Laurence B. Holland
— David Kalstone (eds.), The Norton Anthology of American Literature, New York, Norton,
1989, 2326.
27 Thid., 2326.
28 Boyden, Three Day Road, 291.
29 e.g. Ibid., 120.
* 315 +