three day road response #5

"It has gone too far, hasn't it," he says. 

"I have gone too far, haven't I."

I was not surprised by the ending of the novel. I thought that it was satisfying because it was something of a happy and hopeful ending despite the fact that the novel was full of pain and sadness. Niska saw a vision of two little boys playing in a lake, and although the text doesn't ever specifically say either of the boys are Xavier's sons, Niska says she knows who the father is, and I can infer from this that the father is probably Xavier. This is hopeful for him -- he's spent the entire novel in pain, either in the present with his physical pain on the three day road back home, or in the past with his internal and emotional pain of the war. He deserves to have a happy ending after everything he's been through.

I also wasn't surprised by Xavier's murder of Elijah. I had begun to suspect this would happen when Xavier received a letter from Niska in which her words had been translated wrong and it sounded like she wanted him to kill Elijah, even if it was hard. I just wish it had been done a different way -- or hadn't been done at all. In those last moments, Elijah seemed to return to his former self, not the war-obsessed killing machine he had turned into. In those last moments, it was almost like he understood that Xavier had to kill him -- he understood that he had gone too far and this was the only option.

Throughout the novel, I've always held a certain amount of sympathy for Xavier. He was always the one that was forgotten about, the one swept under the rug even though he was as successful and as good of a soldier as Elijah. He was just quiet and kept to himself and wanted to go home. He was something of an underdog, and we always root for the underdog -- but now I see that even Xavier was hardened and twisted by the war, to the point where he killed his own best friend and then seemingly stole his identity. War touches everyone, and never in a good way.

This novel has many good messages and morals, and I think this one of the most important: war makes monsters of men.