When Xavier returned back to Canada, he began to be more and more addicted to morphine to cope with all of the horrible things he had experienced during the war. This is shown when Xavier says “My body cries out for more, not wanting to believe there is any” (pg.344). This displays that his addiction has gotten out of hand, and uses it for unnecessary reason, and his body feels weak and achy without it.. He had to live the rest of his life with the fact that he had killed his own childhood friend, and that very thing was making his life so much harder to live. On his three day road back, Xavier shows that he has trouble sleeping at night without the morphine; because whenever he shuts his eyes, all he can see is the bad memories that he went through during his time in the army. Boyden really does a good job showing the readers just how difficult it is to return from the war; having all these terrible memories from after and how it really does change a person's life