Many people wonder if war is a necessary evil. War can end injustice and brutality. It can lead to freedom and liberty, and ensure the safety of future generations. However, war also costs lives, and it leads to brutality. War can tear apart families, and cause pain and suffering. In the book My Brother Sam is Dead, the main character, Tim Meeker, has to weigh these factors and choose what side he is on. Throughout the book, he is indecisive, and constantly debates which side he should choose. By the end of the book, Tim decides to become neutral after seeing and experiencing the deaths of Ned, Life Meeker, and Sam Meeker. Ned was a slave owned by a man named Samuel Smith. Ned was a minor character, but his death was significant, and it led to Tim becoming neutral. In chapter ten, the British had marched into Redding to detain the Patriots. While attacking Captain Starr’s house, Tim witnessed something brutal and traumatizing: “He [the british soldier] slid his sword into Ned’s stomach, and then jerked it free. Ned staggered around, still raising his gun up for the shot. The sword flashed in a bright arc, the fastest thing I ever saw move. Ned’s head jumped off his body and popped into the air,”(144-145). Ned’s death is barbaric, but also ironic. Although Ned was holding a gun and was going to shoot the British soldiers, he was doing it for self-defense. The British soldiers were being racist and unjust towards the slaves. The slaves had not done anything to provoke the
Tim imagined how much of a great life or how he may have lived his life up until the day that he was killed by Tim O’Brien. Tim felt both the responsibility and guilt of the person that he killed while saving his own life in the process. Seeing a body as it is lying down in front of you nearly dying and there is not a chance of saving them could leave a scaring memory that would never go away all due to the fact that it happened right in front of your eyes and mostly because of you. Tim may have tried to forget or not think of what had happened but the death of someone usually never goes away and is somehow always a lingering memory that could not be
War can have great outcomes, such as gaining allies, land, money, but the lives lost and families torn apart can
The outcomes of war can sometimes be positive and sometimes negative. In My brother Sam is Dead the authors, James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier, are trying to tell you that war can be good like Patriots fighting for our freedom. Since WWII had already passed we get the advantage of knowing that the patriots won and gained freedom. However at the time people didn’t know if their sacrifices will be actually worth it. War shouldn't be considered a mandatory action even if we may win because there’s still the lives being taken because of it, children killed by men with guns in their hands.
Against The War 1775 “Have you ever seen a dear friend lying in the grass with the top of his skull off and his brains sliding out of them like wet oats?,” The authors of the book “My Brother Sam Is Dead” believe that they are against war. They clearly state reasons why they are against war. The book shows how war divides loyalties within a family. It also shows how war cause huge arguments of generation and the principles versus reality as well. In this book, although both sides of the war are shown, author's Collier and Collier ultimately argue that war is futile.
Since the beginning of time, war has been practiced for numerous reasons ultimately to benefit a group of people or nations. But, when war divides the world into two different sides with the capability to destroy faster than we can create, it makes us question, is war really worth it? With the aftermath of World War One, people we’re still divided, but for a different reason, after a war with a catastrophic amount of deaths we had militarists advocating to fight and pacifists demanding peace. The two sources I have used from this essay comes from a European militarist, Friedrich Von Bernhardi with his book “War a Biological Necessity” and United States pacifists, William James, in his book “Moral Equivalent of War”. Therefore this essay will review the
In the book My Brother Sam Is Dead, Tim is living a regular life running a tavern. His brother Sam is a patriot. His father Life is a loyalist. The revolutionary war is happening. Tim doesn't know what side to be on.
Some people still wonder if war can be justified by its principles or cause. It can be argued that war can be justified due to the principles of freedom and justice that soldiers are willing to die for. However, many argue against this saying that war should be avoided at all costs due to collateral damage and the massive loss of innocent life. In the book My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier, Tim faces the biggest dilemma of his life when he has to decide whether to side with his brother who believes in the principles of war or his father who believes war should be avoided at all costs. When the novel comes to a conclusion, Tim decides that he is neutral and does not agree to either argument due to the irony contained within the deaths of
The majority of people during the American Revolution fought for liberty without realizing the actual cost and brutal reality of war. In the novel My Brother Sam is Dead, the Meeker family consisting of a Father name Life, a Mother named Susannah, a rebellious teen named Sam, and a conflicted teen named Tim, journey through the life of colonists owning a tavern during the Revolutionary War. Sam departs from his family to fight alongside the Patriots going against his Father, a Tory. War brings a lot of terrible things, but some examples are families splitting, clash of generation, and an overall theme of principle vs reality. The soldiers who fought in the war thought they were fighting for liberty, when really they caused havoc and awfulness.
When talking about war, there are many books with few answers to what war truly is. Barbara Ehrenreich brings forth not only the possibilities towards understanding war but also the passion people from history have had towards it. One key issue she brings to light is humanities love for war, so much so that people would use excuses like holy wars to justify their need to fight in a war. She declares that war is as muddled as the issue of diseases and where diseases came from around 200 years ago. More so than that she even goes further on to state that these rituals that date back to prehistoric times are the cause of human nature during times of war rather than human instinct.
The Patriot’s needed to be kept in line, and executing Sam as an example seemed like the best idea to the general. Tim sees his brother, who gave up his everything to enlist, be killed by the soldiers he had fought alongside for three years. The allegation against Sam saying that he stole his own cattle made no sense to Tim, but it showed him that war is not fair. Tim saw how ruthless war could make men, causing them to be power hungry and kill to keep their ego strong. The Patriots were no exception to war’s dominant power, and after Sam’s death, Tim leaned towards
War is one of the most controversial and fascinating aspects of human life, which includes sacrifice, argument, and worst of all human death. The argument of war is whether or not the sacrifice of human life is necessary or not. The authors of My Brother Sam Is Dead are totally against war; they are neutral and they give Tim the same idea as them in the novel. They even show the irony and cruelty of war in the book by the punishing and ironic deaths of Ned, Sam, and Life. This novel is based in Redding, Conneticut during the time of the Revolutionary War.
The Coen brothers write about the Odyssey in their film, O Brother, Where Art Thou?. O Brother, Where Art Thou? mimics the Odyssey in a surreal sense. The writing from the Coen brothers depicts many parallels between the two stories, almost as if O Brother, Where Art Thou?
In the right context, war can be justified. It consists of people voluntarily fighting for a cause they have deemed fit. They willingly make the sacrifice. When innocent people are hurt and have no way to escape, a line has been crossed. These men and women will be thrown around until the conflict has resolved.
Life and Sam was father and son but Sam was colonist and life was more neutral. Life actually was more on the loyalist side, but wouldn't admit that because of same. Life was right for doing what he did. Sam choose the wrong thing to do. Sam had bad things happen to him.
My Brother Sam Is Dead Chapter 1: Page 1-22 Sam is Tim Meeker 's older brother. Tim always looks up to his older brother. Sam then comes home in a uniform at the tavern during April. He starts out by saying "We 've beaten the British in Massachusetts," which sparks up a fight between him and his father which is a loyalist (someone who respects the government and the king). Sam has a discussion with the guests at their tavern and his family on how the Minutemen had surprise attack on the "Lobster backs" (the British) in Lexington.