Indian Horse

Quote in any chapter 45-55 that relates to Saul’s struggle.

Explain how it relates . 7 sentences

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When he knelt down and cradled me in his arms, I felt no shame or fear. I only felt love. I wanted so much to be held and stroked. As he gathered my face in his hands and kissed me, I closed my eyes. I thought of my grandmother. The warmth of her arms holding me. I missed that so much.

“You are a glory, Saul.” That’s what he always told me. It’s what he whispered to me in the dim light of his quarters, what he said to me those nights he snuck into the dormitory and put his head beneath the covers. The words he used in the back of the barn when he slipped my trousers down. That was the phrase that began the groping, the tugging, the pulling and the sucking, and those were always the last words he said to me as he left, arranging his priestly clothes. “You are a glory, Saul.” Those were the words he used instead of love, and he’d given me the job of cleaning the ice to buy my silence, to guard his secret. He’d told me I could play when I was big enough. I loved the idea so much that I kept quiet. I loved the idea of being loved so much that I did what he asked. When I found myself liking it, I felt dirty, repulsive, sick. The secret morning practices that moved me closer to the game also moved me further away from the horror. I used the game to shelter me from seeing the truth, from having to face it every day. Later, after I was gone, the game kept me from remembering. As long as I could escape into it, I could fly away. Fly away and never have to land on the scorched earth of my boyhood.

Richard Wagamese. “Indian Horse.” iBooks. Chapter 49. Page 115.

The climax of Indian Horse comes when Saul remembers Father Leboutilier’s abuse. Wagamese describes the assault with vivid auditory and tactile imagery. In his recollection, Saul brings it out of the forgotten past and experiences the assaults as if they are happening to him in the present. The descriptive imagery also summons up visceral disgust in the reader, who experiences it along with Saul. Along with the shock of the scene, Saul’s sudden recollection reverberates through the novel as he realizes how it echoed through his entire past, the past he has been narrating until he left the New Dawn Centre. Like Saul, the reader is forced to look back on what came before and reinterpret it. For example, we now understand Saul’s relationship with hockey as rooted in a desire for refuge, rather than simply an inborn love for the game.

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