The Profound Impact of Oppression on Characters in Three Day Road

This essay provides a detailed analysis of Joseph Boyden's "Three Day Road," focusing on the profound impact of oppression on the character development of Xavier, Elijah, and Niska. The essay explores three key forms of oppression: cultural imperialism, marginalization, and violence, demonstrating how these forces shape the characters' experiences and ultimately lead to tragic outcomes. The author examines how cultural imperialism undermines the Aboriginal identity, marginalization leads to feelings of insignificance and despair, and violence creates a climate of fear and subjugation. Through textual analysis, the essay highlights the devastating consequences of these oppressions, illustrating how they affect the characters' psychological well-being and their ability to navigate the world. The essay concludes by reiterating the pervasive influence of oppression in the novel, emphasizing its role in shaping the characters' fates and underscoring the novel's critique of societal injustices. The essay showcases how oppression, in its various forms, denies individuals their basic rights and hinders their personal growth.

INTRODUCTORY PARAGRAPH
Introductory phrases
This essay will illustrate the profound impact of oppression on the character development of the main characters. Oppression exist and appear in
many forms in society, generally speaking, the ruling class or dominating class exert detrimental pressure on the lower class, leading to social
disturbance and cause great harm physically and psychologically to the victims. .
Directional sentences (9 lines)
Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden depict a story in which two aboriginal young people went to the Europe to fight for their country. When they
embark on a new journey, get into the white’s world, they need fight with the enemy but also internal enemy is more challenging. Joseph Boyden, who
has half-blood of aboriginal, with several relatives in the army at that time, has the direct life experience with the soldiers in the front. The war is not to
produce the hero in this novel, the depressing mood permeate through the whole book. it is a war field of powerless, marginalization and violence
caused by his own people, which even worse and invisible but hurtful and haunting every day in your life.
Thesis statement (5 lines)
The bad atmosphere, the dream broken, the ambition cannot be fulfilled, being exposed to the brutality and unfairness , being curbed, being shocked
to accept the death and devastating life have great impact on the characters of Xavier, Elijah and Niska. Before the war, they are quite normal persons
killing time by hunting and busy with surviving, throughout the war, Xavier escape the death slightly, Elijah was killed by his close friend, Niska was
thrown into the harsh reality. All ends with tragedy. When the soldiers went to the front full of passion for fight for their country, whey they end up with
such a tragedy. The root reason is that the ruling class, whites exploit them, discriminate them and force them to the bottom of the society by violence,
by racism.

Body paragraph
1st Argument (culture imperialism)
Topic sentence
One of the oppression is called cultural imperialism. it can take various and subtle form. Such as mocking someone over a small action,
humiliating your faith and your race with coarse language, or impose your culture value and customs on you without any option. It signified the
dimensional process of control over those who are conquered. when one nation or one race was invaded by other nations more powerful or
more aggressive, the first thing the invader will do is to eliminating the culture, the faith and customs. They do this by humiliating them, by
forcing them to abandon their own language or dress customs. They think themselves as master, can use any violence to force people
immersed in their culture. Those who are invaders are subject to any penalty and they are too weak to protest. The most effective way is to
educate the kids in the school in a rude and commanding way. When a person never can feel proud of who he is and never can take pride in
their own race and culture, he lost the identity and sink into the state of self-inferior.
Concluding sentence
Any civilization is unique and is the valuable assets of human history, worth maintaining and inherited. Aboriginal people is never inferior to
whites. They are very rich in culture. For each individual like Xavier, they will experience this and feel deep pain. These image, like the bones of
dead body, keep haunting to him. He therefore lives in a very constant fear of being abused even he has finished school days. His is inward,
less talkative and even a little narrow minded with resentment, all comes from these horrible memories, these hurting are scars engraved in his
body and mind, aching each moment. His character of being depressive is shaped by his experience.
2nd Argument (marginalization)
Topic sentence
Another form of oppression is demonstrated in this book is marginalization, it refers to the dominating group try to push the aboriginal people to

the corner of the society, making them feel peripheral and insignificant mostly purposely. Those who have greater privilege enjoy all public
resources. They can use derogatory language to hurt, or use the privilege to limit their access to the public resources or unconsciously mocking
and humiliating only based on their stereotypes.
Concluding sentences
For the soldiers who fight for their country should be highly honored and treated, respected by the country and people in this country because
they sacrifice their youth, the lives to gain the peace for the country. However, owing to the marginalization, no matter how hard they work to
prove themselves, no matter how talented in the field, they cannot win the recognition. Soldiers are those who have meritorious military service
are treated in this way, not to speak of normal people living in the remote tribes. The resent, the hatred and frustration cause a talented soldier
go to extreme and causing the fatal death. Elijah’s personally was shattered into pieces. Marginalization makes a human being become an
animal.
3rd Argument (violence)
Topic sentences
Violence is already most crucial components when the invader wants to take over. from the context, it can easily be seen how the privileged
group hurt them, harm them without being punished by their law. They can show violence at any time toward anybody they hate by intimidating
them, beating them, or executing them in any way the like. Thus, the lower class will be made more obedient and subservient. Men can
victimize women, adults can beat and abuse kids. They sub-class people can never have chance to get protection and compensation, they do
not have any dignity in the social life as a human being.
Concluding sentences
Niska is supposed a beautiful and normal lady if she lived a society with good education and guidance. She degenerated herself into the
isolated world, afraid of involving the white’s social life to accept another culture because she was abused physically and verbally many times
by the white’s men.

CONCLUDING PARAGRAPH (please help write below)
RE-STATEMENT OF THESIS (about 3-4 sentences)
The above essay has summarized the 3 distinct forms of oppression namely cultural imperialism, marginalization and violence that are
described in the book called Three-day road, written by Joseph Boyden. It has excellently described the 3 main characters namely Xavier,
Elijah and Niska with a distinct story of each facing different type of oppressions that has negatively affected their individual characters to a
great extent. It has therefore depicted the factual consequences of all these 3 kind of oppressions with depiction of the above specified
characters in a deeply tragic manner.
REAFFIRMATION OF ISSUES (about 3-4 sentences)
This is basically to reiterate the issues faced by all of the 3 descripted characters where the first character called Xavier has gone through the
state of cultural imperialism in which he marginally escaped the death in the war and ultimately characterized as a depressed individual. Another
character called Elijah faced the calamities of marginalization with a bounty of slaughter by his own close friend. Lastly, the third character named
Niska was also forced to go through the tragic phase of oppression in the form of violence where she paid hard for belonging to a lower community
and left with a miserable life that already went full of exploitations by white men.
CONCLUDING SENTENCE (about 9 sentences)
This is to conclude the above written story of Joseph Boyden stating 3 different forms of oppressions and its impact on the character
development of 3 main characters presented in the above mentioned book. Herein, all three characters have been found to go through a
devastating state of life and that in turn impacted them to a great extent. It has basically showcased the negative influence of oppression with
major concerns of marginalization, cultural imperialism and violence. Oppression is referred to be a very age old concern of those suffering
from unjust tyrant of powerful people in the society. It is basically on considering the traditional concept of oppression that means the

application of tyranny by a ruling group of individuals. Culture imperialism is specified to be yet another form of oppression that is an outcome
of powerlessness and refers to an ultimate stage of oppression where the oppressed people are not even allowed to share their troubled
situation and declaring the same is strictly prohibited for them. This is a situation faced by Xavier who was ultimately left dejected and largely
depressed from his own self. Marginalization leads to create severe impact on people’s personality as well as on their social and emotional
health where the marginalized individuals depict a common response of anguish in the form of rage with a similar instance of Elijah faced the
same. Lastly, violence being the most common form of oppression in which certain set of people in the community are living with the fact of
facing random fear and unprovoked outbreaks or assaults with no such motive, but with an intention of injuring them or humiliate senselessly. It
is with a similar context of Niska who was also ill-treated by the white men’s. All these findings conclude that all form of oppressions directly
leads to create a state of torment for the oppressed group of individuals. It largely hampers both their mental and physical development by
together denying their access to basic constitutional assurances.