Thursday, March 10, 2011

Entry Three


         Shaara continues the book with the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg. I liked this section, although it sometimes moved a little slow, it provided a deeper understanding of the characters and further developed them. One thing that surprised and delighted me was that the title, The Killer Angels, was derived from one of Chamberlain's poems. While on the battlefield Chamberlain remembered reciting a speech to his father and after hearing his father's reaction, went to school the next day to talk about: "Man, The Killer Angel." I kind of took this as for how wonderful man kind is, we are a murdering, viscous breed that will do anything for our survival. So it is a little ironic how Chamberlain and Shaara refers to us as "Killer Angels." Also the Union won the Battle of Gettysburg and although they saved the North (Angels) there were many casualties from the Confederates as well as from the Union (Killers).
     Later in the novel, Fremantle, the British army observer praises General Lee for his fighting tactics and brings up the fact that he is a member of the English Church, which caught me a little off guard. 
    I also find it interesting the different opinions and suggestions from the Confederate side and the utter disregard for them. And I wonder if Lee listened to these if it might've changed the outcome of this particular battle or the war. 
      Lastly, what I saw as the more organized, disciplined army, the Union started to disagree about who is in charge and in the heat of the moment pointed fingers and blamed all but themselves. This scene definitely shed some light on the fact that both armies were at points in the battle in a very panicked, chaotic state.
        General Lee's Retreat happens later in the novel, but I find this interesting given the fact that Longstreet is relentless in his persuasion of the General to swing the troops back and to block off Washington D.C., but Lee won't have any of it. If retreated with a full, healthy army I could only guess that this would prove beneficial for the Confederates and successfully be able to either capture the capital or take the Union army.
     On this note, given that the Confederate Army makes the right moves, the outcome of the war could have been very different, drastically altering our lives today. The video below is a trailer of a movie titled, The Confederate States of America. This movie shows us today the horrid reality of what life would be like and if one thing here or one thing there changed during the Civil War that we would not have the same lives that we do today. 



1 comment:

  1. Last year we learned about the Civil War. But this is way more information then we ever had on one specific battle. I think it is interesting how the North ended up winning the Civil War, but we didn't learn that much about the battles, we just learned one or two ways to remember who won each battle. Thanks to your link, I know almost everything there is to know about General Lee's retreat. It is amazing what you can earn when you read a book rather than taking a class for a year. I also think that it is interesting that the "Angels" are the north, and the "Killers" are the south. This makes me think that the author takes the north's side.

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