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Sean Devey 9/14/09

The language of this book is very difficult to understand. It is written like people talked in the 1850’s. They also use language that only certain parts of the country would use. All these language issues together make it a hard book to read. I think it is meant for high school students due to the language. It also has some curse words that middle school parents might not want their children to read. I have friends who also had to read this book in high school which means it is a popular book for that age. In this book a couple of themes have shown up in the first half of the book. The first one I realized was fear. Henry wasn’t originally afraid of the army. When he gets to a camp to wait for the army to attack, he starts to get a little bit scared. This fear keeps growing through chapter 10, which is where I am now in my reading. Another theme I recognized is conflict. There are conflicts with battles, and with other soldiers both on his side and the enemies’. In my opinion, the most serious conflict I saw was when Henry imagined the other soldiers as monsters because that was the final thing that happened before he ran away. Only one new character is introduced in this section of the book. He is the tattered soldier. The soldier wants to make friends with Henry after a battle, but Henry won’t talk to him because he is not injured and refuses to admit he ran away from the army. Henry ends up leaving the wounded tattered soldier on the battlefield to fend for himself. One of the new things that happened is that Henry is starting to feel a little bit of doubtfulness and fear. He starts to hear other stories that soldiers are talking about. To add to that problem, everybody is saying that the battle is going to start soon. Not long after that, he heard gun shots and the battle started. The second new thing that happened is that a character dies. His name was Jim Conkin. Jim was a very happy confident man who could make any soldier happy again. Henry felt if Jim could die, anybody could die, even him.