76 pages • 2 hours read
Richard WagameseIndian Horse
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Horses
Horses are a central symbol in the novel. The horse, Saul’s namesake, brings the teaching of the changing ways to come. Once Saul begins playing hockey, the players are frequently described in equine terms. Even early on, before Saul is allowed to play, he describes the players thusly: “Their faces burned with zeal and joy and their breathing was like the expelled air of mustangs” (67). Soon after, as Saul is allowed to play, he describes of his first sense of belonging among players after a scrimmage: “We stood there like stallions home from the range” (71). When Saul is first covertly learning the game, his stand-in for a is a stack of horse turds.
Warriors/Soldiers
Hockey players are frequently referred to as warriors or soldiers. Before he begins playing at St. Jerome’s, Saul describes the other players by saying: “As they pumped their legs and swung their arms in pursuit of the puck, zipping by me in a blur, they were warrior-like” (67). This warrior nature of the Indigenous players is emphasized when Saul joins the Moose, who are a bit more rough and tumble. As Saul says, “We came from nations of warriors, and the sudden flinging down of sticks and gloves, the wild punches and wrestling were extensions of that identity” (111). Fred Kelly refers to the Moose as a “war party on skates” (116).
Saul himself becomes a warrior against the racism of the crowds and his own haunting past. He plays in order to push against the stereotypes and to prove the racist crowds wrong. The symbol is used solely for Indigenous players until Saul joins the Marlboros, whose skill and precision also earn them the descriptive. This is right when Saul loses the passion for the game, thereby passing the warrior moniker to other players.
Thirteen
Saul takes on the jersey number 13 supposedly because no one else wants it, but it carries heavy symbolism. Not only is it generally accepted to be unlucky, like Saul, but also it has a number of more symbolic meanings.
It is said that Judas Iscariot was the 13th man to take his place at the Last Supper. Saul first takes the number 13 when he joins his first white team, and begins to lose the joy of the game. His joining their team and choosing that number could represent a form of betrayal committed against the other Indigenous players.
Thirteen is also a significant number in Norse history, which says that when a 13th god (Loki) shows up to a banquet uninvited, he kills another god, which leads to Ragnarok, or Armageddon. In joining his first white team, Saul begins the journey toward his own destruction.
Space
Hockey and its players are also often referred to in intergalactic language. When he first watches the game being played, Saul says that the boys “hurtled like comets” (57). Later, he refers to the puck as a “small planet in a universe of white” (69). Father Leboutiier even says: “‘Hockey is like the universe, Saul…. When you stand in the dark and look up at it, you see the placid fire of stars. But if we were right in the heart of it, we’d see chaos. Comets churning by. Meteorites. Star explosions’” (84). The game is continually referred to in astrological terms, giving it a sense of importance and vastness. This emphasizes that the game is larger and more important than its players. The space-centered language also offers a way to emphasize the game’s transcendent nature without utilizing the religious language found in the words of the priests and nuns.
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By Richard Wagamese
