Character Analysis: My Brother Sam Is Dead

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War, its brutal ironies and breathtaking triumphs, will forever be accompanied by both negative and positive impacts. In its best instances, it has the ability to liberate a nation. Consequentially, it is the hope of a valiant ending that has started every war, victorious or otherwise. However, the question of whether or not the uncertain outcomes of war are worth lives ruined is one which hangs in the back of the minds of everyone involved. The novel, My Brother Sam is Dead by the Collier brothers, tells the story of Tim, a boy grappling with this dilemma. The brutal, ironic deaths of the characters Ned, Jerry, and Sam convince Tim to become neutral. Ned’s death was Tim’s first glance at the senseless brutality of war. A slave from Redding and uninvolved in the war, Ned dies during an attack on Captain Starr’s house. The cold-blooded British soldiers, with families at home, watched as “Ned’s head jumped off his body and popped into the air” (145). The soldiers killed Ned because the color of his skin did not afford him the principles of freedom and equality that the Patriots fought for. The injustice of Ned’s death disturbed Tim. Seeing this swayed Tim’s decision due to the fact that it eradicated his belief that every violence committed in war was a sacrifice. Naive, Tim had presumed that the deaths caused by the war were …show more content…
Only ten years old, the British let him die of disease on a prison ship and then dumped his body into the sea. Upon hearing of Jerry’s death, Tim’s mother exclaims, “‘They’re animals now, they’re all beasts,” (166). Soldiers should fight for the safety of innocents, but their greed for violence and power made them responsible for the death of a boy. Tim becomes neutral due to the fact that the innate morality he expects from all of humanity is forgotten by either side of the war. The ideals he aspires to hold show themselves to be the beginnings of a loss of
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