Three Day Road Blog

In the novel Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden the scene were Xavier and Elijah are told to go out into no man's land to frisk the famous german sniper that Xavier just had killed is a very key scene. It is were the tension between the two best friends starts to build on the front. Elijah who loves attention and acts as if killing the enemy is a game and that he is invincible becomes very jealous of how he did not kill the famous sniper, but Xavier did. This jealousy also shows how all the killing is slowly corrupting Elijah making him a monster.

McCaan tells Elijah that he most take Corporal Thompson out into no man's land with us tonight to frisk the dead man.

This bit of news angers Elijah, but he doesn't let it show. "Yes, Sergeant," he says. "Yes, Sergeant."

I can see that he'd rather go out alone. He'd rather leave Thompson in the trench, and me too, for that matter. Elijah like to go out of the trench at night and do his own patrols. Just him and the mud. He'd get court-martialled if Breech knew. But he must take me out with him tonight. The kill was mine after all, wasn't it? My first as a sniper. Elijah can't believe he didn't get the shot. He told me himself that he was more surprised than anyone.

(p.136)

This scene connects to the rest of the book by showing the start of how Elijah acts as if he is hunting on the front and how the only thing that he wants to do out there is kill fritz to raise his score and how he is willing to sneak off, risking his life just to get a couple of kills. This problem Elijah has slowly consumes him. He gets to a point were nothing will be able to help him. He begins to scalp his enemies and keep the hair and skin as a trophy of his kill. He even ends up killing a child for no reason. As this happens Xavier notices and tries to help but it only ever make Elijah upset creating even more tension between the two of them. This leeds to where Xavier has to do the unthinkable to stop his best friends rampage.