Drummer Boy of Shiloh, Truth of Battle

The Drummer Boy of Shiloh is a short story written by Ray Bradbury about a young drummer boy in the Battle of Shiloh. Joby, the boy, wakes up one night in Shiloh, startled by a sudden movement, and starts to think about his future regarding the battle. The fourteen year old Joby is thinking about how all the men in the battle are armed with weapons and shields, but how he only has a drum and too sticks to beat it. Joby reads his thoughts aloud in the book, about how he thinks that all the men in the army are probably telling themselves that they won’t die, and that they will come home alive. While Joby is pondering on his sorrows about the war, a general comes upon him and sees him thinking. The General tells the boy that it is okay to cry and that he was crying the night before.

When the General tells Joby that it’s okay to cry, it made me realize that the General understands war, and the consequences. War kills, injures and changes people’s lives forever. What this book portrays to me about all these men is that they are too confident about the war and themselves. They all individually believe that they will survive and still be alive to come home, but in war you can never guarantee anything. The purpose of war is to kill as many people from the enemy as you can, but the men from each side are blinded by the truth. Most of these men are going to die in the end. War is deadly, and you must be prepared for the worst, because that is what comes during battle.

Something that really supported my thoughts on the men’s blindness was when I looked at my own personal experiences. When I am looking forward to something, I try to block out all of the bad things that could prevent it from happening and focus only on the end result. These are mutual feelings shared by all human beings. But in The Drummer Boy of Shiloh, the emotions of the other men are hidden and you only have a window into Joby’s emotions. Joby is different, he is not confident, but that is because he is not able to hope for the best. Joby has nothing that will help him survive through the war, only a drum and two sticks. Joby and the General’s feelings showed me how differently they thought about the war than the other men, because they were not over confident and expecting of the best. The General gave Joby a speech, telling him to be proud to be the drummer boy, and that the drummer boy holds the army together. I realized that this was not over confidence, but hope and the power of believing. The General’s speech showed me that he was not one that was looking forward to possibly surviving, but one who had been through war before and did not expect anything in the end.

The book The Drummer Boy of Shiloh showed me the perspectives from three different characters on their feelings towards the war. Joby, a boy with little confidence, did not know how he would survive the upcoming battles with only his drum and the sticks used to beat it. The General, a man of much accomplishment and history, was not afraid to express hi feelings, and was ready for any outcome to come from the war. The majority of the remaining 40,000 men from that night,were overconfident and truly believed they would be the one to be alive at the end of the war. The different perspectives showed me that most the men fighting in the civil war where blinded by the light at the end of the tunnel, and didn’t stop to consider what could actually prevent them from getting to it.