76 pages • 2 hours read
Indian Horse
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Themes
Tension Between Old and Modern Ways
As the book begins, Saul states that when he was born, people still talked in the old way, but that his generation crossed a border. The horse’s teaching told by his great-grandfather, Shabogeesick, emphasizes this tension. The teaching says that a change will come and scorch their lives, and they must learn to ride the horses of change.
Saul’s experience of this tension is played out in his own family. His grandmother, Naomi, strives to keep Saul away from the white man and the school, telling him legends and singing Ojibway songs. His parents, however, call Naomi’s ceremonies blasphemy, and even blame her insistence on returning to Gods Lake for Benjamin’s death. Saul’s mother outright says, “Those gods are dead” (32) after Benjamin dies.
Saul, however, experiences the old ways personally through his visions. He sees his ancestors in the land, and is comforted by snatches of the Old Talk. At St. Jerome’s, they are forbidden from speaking Ojibway, and Saul’s familiarity with English makes him an outcast. The other children call him “Zhaunagush,” though he feels no connection to the Christian religion that the priests and nuns try to force upon him.
One of the most heart-breaking examples of this tension playing out is in the vignette in chapter 13, where the children find and capture fish, but release them as they have nowhere to prepare or cook the fish. They sleep smelling the scent of fish on their hands. Saul and his classmates have been forced into a sterile, Christian environment, where they do not have the tools or opportunity to live the way their ancestors did, and the way they were raised to. It’s a metaphor for how this generation of Indigenous children was forcibly pushed into modern, Christian society. Deprived of the connection to nature they previously thrived on, they are forced into regimented societies that do not value their skills, and they feel isolated and useless.
Communication Versus Silence
Early in the novel, Saul wonders if speaking out would have changed things for him. When his parents leave to bury Benjamin, he says: “Sometimes I think that if I had yelled something it would have all been different. But no words were in me” (33). In hindsight, he feels the weight of that silence bearing down, but can do nothing but feel regret.
Saul is only able to survive at St. Jerome’s by isolating himself. As he says: “I learned that I could draw the boundaries of my physical self inward, collapse the space I occupied and become a mote, a speck, an indifferent atom in its own peculiar orbit” (48-49). He also refers to this state as his “chrysalis of silence” (49). His classmates, who engage more with the priests and nuns and have attachments to other students, commit suicide or go mad. It becomes the first of many coping mechanisms.
Even when his teammates are urinated on and beat up by the white man in Devon, they all agree not to communicate about it. Their silent glances say plenty, but Saul, primed to keep to himself, even finds keeping silent the preferred method of dealing with pain among his new teammates.
When he leaves for Toronto and Virgil says he is like a brother, Saul admits he had one but that he never talks about it. Instead of pressing for details, Virgil understands, saying: ‘My dad never talks about the school…. Mom neither. And they don’t say anything about what happened before that. Maybe someone just gave you a chance to rub the shit off the board once and for all’ (157). Virgil has learned second-hand that silence was a skill one learned at St. Jerome, and doesn’t push Saul to open up.
Alcohol gives him a means of opening up, though it’s through other people’s stories. Though he’s been trained to be stoic, he still misses the camaraderie of the bench after he gives up hockey. Alcohol allows him to access a talkative part of himself he never knew, even if he is just spitting lies.
It’s only after uncovering the memory of his abuse and seeking treatment that Saul is able to communicate his own history with those closest to him. Fred and Martha Kelly are given to silence, even saying “‘People put way too much stock in words’” (208) after he appears as an adult. However, he does open up to them and tell them about his abuse. He even refers to it frankly as rape for the first time, instead of speaking in euphemisms or insinuations.
From that point on, he opens up to Virgil as well, and begins to be more clear-headed about his past and future.
Pride
Saul’s sense of pride becomes an issue the deeper he goes in the white hockey world. Though he originally doesn’t play to prove anything to himself or others, by the time he’s playing in tournaments with the Moose against white players, “people [were] curious to see if Indians could really skate, if [they] could play the game right” and Saul “took it as [his] personal responsibility to show them” (130).
He and his teammates also refuse to talk about the assault in Devon, in order to avoid becoming victims.
Saul’s pride gets the best of him when playing for the Marlboros. Instead of rising above the taunts and criticism, he snaps and feeds into it. He becomes a fighter and a puck hog just to infuriate the crowd that had mocked him. His pride remains too high to stay on the team after he is benched and forces him to give up the opportunity to play at the highest level.
Though certainly the racism and microaggressions were foisted upon him, he reacts against them instead of ignoring them.
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