Literary Analysis Essay on Richard Wagamese in Indian Horse

Introduction

The Indian horse is a severe and beautiful Novel narrated by Richard Wargamese (an Ojibway writer) concerning an Indian horse, and a former hockey starts animal that undergoes treatment due to alcoholism. Wargamese's autobiography is also used to convey the plot of the novel. Similarly, the book also demonstrates how one can heal their broken spirit when they know their story. The essay will analyze how the novel depicts the needs of human and how they reconcile between the past and the present conditions.

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The story begins with how the Indian horse hit bottom and almost killed Saul because of the lack of alcoholism treatment. Since Paul wanted peace, he ignored the situation by giving a different story. Through him, readers understand the life of Saul from the time he lived in northern Ojibway and how he underwent through joys and sorrows. With insights and comparisons, the author traces through fictional characters by declining the way of culture. For Saul, he was forced to leave his motherland to the residential school. However, he got his freedom because he came through an incredible gift called hockey.

He then passed through the harsh realities in Canada in the 1960s, where he had to battle with racism and the spirit of destroying effects of displacement and cultural alienation. The Canadian families sixty years ago are much different when a comparison is made today (Millow 102). The idea of the 'perfect family' which comprised of the wife, husband, and children never existed because of the division of labor between men and women. During those days, women rarely worked but stayed in the house while men remained the breadwinner. Security and prosperity, in this case, were based `on the success of the of people and how steady they maintained an excellent reputation through a steady income. In the novel, this theme winds like a river through the harsh terrain in the work of Wargames.

Base on Wargames viewpoint he considered native spirituality and rituals to explore the political violence and political solutions. He even stated during an interview that 'Every person is passing through a political solution that requires the visitation of the constitutional process.' He said this by comparing the amendments done in India when they were implementing the Royal Commission. However, it was later that it was not beneficial. Born in 1955, Wagemes lived near the Dalles Research at Kenora. During this time he wrote other books to examine the spiritual healing by tackling the subject of the way of life. Throughout the chapters, the author braids together his two traditions, the aboriginal oral and the English literature.

The novel also appears as Canada's reconciliation and truth commission to study on the effect of residential school and the interim report. Wargames corroborates this issue of horror by using bad beats behind him to prevent him from using his sleeve to wipe his nose (Hoy 85). This is because of the child that hanged himself from the barn rafters at the age of six years. Another reason is how a little girl was put in a box who kept on urinating on her body mysteriously before she stabbed herself. These writings made Wage qualify for his courage to revealing how people were in the silent campaigns for many generations.

People who dared to talk about the wrong done in history were accused of whining and became victims. But Wargames feared non and wrote without apologizing. With such emotional restraint and specificity, the reader sometimes forgets to breathe. A good example was used in Saul and how he exploited on the loose ice at the clothes of St Jerome. Saul, later moves to Manitouwadge with his family to attend the native tournaments. While describing the icy exhilaration and freedom, we see the eight-year-old Saul removing snow from the ice to allow the school team practices the handling of the stick in the pre-dawn hours

Usually, the original oral stories are sometimes simplified in a wrong way while the oral-based literature also had the same status. To emphasize the transformative power into the account, the author wrote about the discursive transparency. Through Saul's hybrid cultural status, the ordinary indigenous people that live in the colonial society is predicted in the connection between the colonial present with the collective past and how it challenged the indigenous people (LaRocque 98).

He did this by showing how they went through a lot of dilemmas after the settler society arrived. The author also uses unifying ways of the culture of the Anishinaubae and the indigenous culture to talk about the encounter challenge (Smith 65). He does this by preserving and imparting the indigenous cultural wisdom to provide the flexibility, fluidity, and adaptability to cope with the cultural transition. The author also used the Jim Crow imposition to show how the African Americans suffered due to racial inequalities

Works Cited

Milloy, John S. A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986. Winnipeg: U of Manitoba P, 2006. Print.

Hoy, Helen. How Should I Read These? Native Women Writers in Canada. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2001. Print.

LaRocque, Emma. When the Other is Me: Native Resistance Discourse, 1850-1990. Winnipeg: U of Manitoba P, 2011. Print.

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. New York: Zed, 1999. Print.