Chapter Summary For Watie Sparknotes

Jeff Bussey had no idea how brutal war really was, and he certainly found out the hard way in Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith. Jeff thinks being a soldier would be fun and adventurous. He learns how cruel and brutal war really is, but he also finds love along the way. Harold Keith mixes fact with his story, and not his story with his fact. Which is a good thing. A good example of this is on page 22. “But all they got was one light blue blouse, one pair of cotton socks, and one pair of drawers each.” In this piece, the uniforms of the Union soldiers is described, but the writing of Keith transform it into a complaint. It sounds like the speaker is complaining, which distracts the reader from the fact. This is awesome. The reader can absorb the historically correct information in the form of a story. Unfortunately, for me, I figured this out in the very beginning of the story, so I was on the lookout for the rest of the book, and only paying attention to the fact.

“...for the right to decide what kind of state we want without the ballots being rigged by thousands of Missourians crossing the line to vote.” This was a perfect balance of too little and too much fact. If he had just written “...without Missourians crossing the line..” than the sentence would feel incomplete, and in my case, underwhelming and vague. If he had written “...3,287 [random number] Missourians crossed the line…” It would have sounded too exact and formal. This delicate balance shows up many times in the story, and Harold Keith aces hid balancing act every