Indian Horse Analysis
The Broken, The Lost, The Haunted
Being traumatized by abuse from a young age can haunt you for a lifetime. In the novel Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese, the nuns and priests mentally and physically abuse the children, traumatizing them for a lifetime.Children at the residential school face severe abuse and humiliation, leaving them broken and lost.
The children at the residential schools face different types of humiliation and abuse. When Arden Little Light arrives at the school, the nuns try to stop his bad habit of wiping his nose on his sleeve, but when he forgets, they punish him through humiliation. Saul remembers as the nuns disgrace Arden in front of everyone, “They began standing him at the front of the chapel, the classroom, the …show more content…
Since Arden faces humiliation for so long, at such a young age, it convinces him to commit suicide at the mere age of six. Saul recalls how they descry his remains, “The nuns found him hanging from the rafters of the barn on a cold February morning. He’d wrapped his own hands behind his back with twists of rope before he’d jumped” (50). He must have been brutally haunted from the trauma, to decide at such a young age that he couldn’t live anymore. The public humiliation he faced everyday is the cause of his death, because he could not hand the nuns degrading him, a six year old boy, without second thought, he jumped and brought an end to his own life. As the nuns intended, Sheila broke herself, the constant reciting began to take a toll on her mental stability to the point where she goes psychotic. Saul witnessed Sheila’s broken state of mind during his time at St. Germ’s, “She’d just walk the halls of St. Germ’s muttering incomprehensible phrases and then burst out with a wild laugh, hitting herself with stinging slaps to the face before she returned to her vacant-faced mumbles” (51). At the age of twelve, they sent Sheila to a mental asylum. The nuns broke down a child though relentless mental abuse and physically through beatings, enough that it made her go mad. Sheila left the residential school without the grace and serenity she came with. Unlike the others, Saul had the opportunity to grow up and come to terms
Being traumatized by abuse from a young age can haunt you for a lifetime. In the novel Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese, the nuns and priests mentally and physically abuse the children, traumatizing them for a lifetime.Children at the residential school face severe abuse and humiliation, leaving them broken and lost.
The children at the residential schools face different types of humiliation and abuse. When Arden Little Light arrives at the school, the nuns try to stop his bad habit of wiping his nose on his sleeve, but when he forgets, they punish him through humiliation. Saul remembers as the nuns disgrace Arden in front of everyone, “They began standing him at the front of the chapel, the classroom, the …show more content…
Since Arden faces humiliation for so long, at such a young age, it convinces him to commit suicide at the mere age of six. Saul recalls how they descry his remains, “The nuns found him hanging from the rafters of the barn on a cold February morning. He’d wrapped his own hands behind his back with twists of rope before he’d jumped” (50). He must have been brutally haunted from the trauma, to decide at such a young age that he couldn’t live anymore. The public humiliation he faced everyday is the cause of his death, because he could not hand the nuns degrading him, a six year old boy, without second thought, he jumped and brought an end to his own life. As the nuns intended, Sheila broke herself, the constant reciting began to take a toll on her mental stability to the point where she goes psychotic. Saul witnessed Sheila’s broken state of mind during his time at St. Germ’s, “She’d just walk the halls of St. Germ’s muttering incomprehensible phrases and then burst out with a wild laugh, hitting herself with stinging slaps to the face before she returned to her vacant-faced mumbles” (51). At the age of twelve, they sent Sheila to a mental asylum. The nuns broke down a child though relentless mental abuse and physically through beatings, enough that it made her go mad. Sheila left the residential school without the grace and serenity she came with. Unlike the others, Saul had the opportunity to grow up and come to terms