Thursday, July 30, 2015

In March, by Geraldine Brooks, does March still believe that the war is just by the end of the novel?

Brooks' novel March is the story of
Mr. March, the father of the March family in Louis May Alcott's Little
Women
.  In Little Women, the father is away at war, and
Alcott focuses on the story of the mother and her four daughters.  Brooks, however,
tells the story of the idealistic Mr. March, who goes to war and whose noble goals are
replaced with disillusionment.  March goes to war to fight for equality for all men. 
But March sees too much--he sees suffering, torture, killings, beatings. The Union Army
for which he fights is not morally better than the Confederates.  When March protests
that the Confederates are not savages, others scoff. 


But
March also loses faith in himself.  He fails to save an injured soldier when he promised
to get the soldier across the river when his company was retreating.  And, in return,
another man, Canning, is tortured and later dies as a result of trying to save
March.


When March returns home, he has realized that war
did not solve problems, that it brought out the darkness of man and his own
weakness.   He calls himself "a fool, a coward, uncertain about
everything." 

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