Halfbreed Analysis

Throughout Maria Campbell’s autobiography Halfbreed, Campbell depicted most of her life from the beginning of her childhood to the time where she grew up and becomes more concern with the Aboriginal community by educating herself with Aboriginal history. But throughout Campbell’s life journey, she is struggling to survive and to overcome her past and find ways to build a better future. Maria Campbell’s childhood was relatively happy until the death of her mother, and everything went downhill after. Medicine has played an important role on the ups and downs of her life. She falls into drug addiction with hard drugs in order to keep her happy, helping her sleep, and forgetting about her problems. But on the other hand, drugs also helped her realized
When Campbell moves to Vancouver with her first husband, Darrel, in hopes for a better relationship and future. However, she turns into prostitution because her husband is no longer supporting her. The life of prostitution turns Campbell into drug addiction, which she thinks that it could help her to escape and forget about her problems. When she first started taking drugs, she mentioned, “I took them like they were going out of style. They helped me to sleep, they kept me happy, and most of all, I could forget about yesterday and tomorrow.” (Campbell, 136) But she then realized that drugs make her more and more depressed instead of making her happy, she was already addicted to it and could not escape from the addiction at that time and she aware that her dream is getting farther and farther away from her. “To live in that dream world meant I had to have enough money to pay for it. Heroin meant money and lots of it. That kind of money meant I had to keep the man who was keeping me happy.” (Campbell, 137) Because of her addiction, she had made bad decisions on her life such as prostitution and becoming a kept woman of a wealthy man. But at the same time, because of her addiction, the wealthy man left her and she went downhill with worse drug addiction, “By this time my sole obsession was dope. I didn’t care anymore about anything, not even my baby.” (Campbell, 138) The result of drug addiction makes her demand for a change; then she met Ray, a guy who helps her to get rid of drug addiction and provide her with a job that she can start a normal