Killer Angels - Book Report/Review Example

Shaara uses episodic scenes to show the interactions among the men involved and the problems that arise in a prewar context; he also shows how decisions made by them are induced and influenced by those people’s personal and individual emotional intelligence as well as experience. Beside these institutional facades, Shaara’s novel also conveys the reality of war, with its losses and tragedies. Using the omniscient narrator and third person point of view in the novel, Shaara attempts to explore deep into the motivations and deep emotions of the Generals fighting the Battle of Gettysburg.

Necessarily such capability of Shaara’s narrator allows him to work out the theme of the novel that whereas the Battle of Gettysburg, in generally, the war is a game for some enthusiastic war-leaders, it is the fate of destruction and tragedy for their fellowmen. While General Robert E. Lee is driven by his personal desire for mastery over the battlefield and his thirst for his opponent army’s poorest defeat, his soldiers must pay the cost of his mistake. Yet he is not the less experienced; rather he is a wise general who can inspire his soldiers for the supreme sacrifice.

But his war-tactics are outdated. He cannot realize it because he is blindfolded by his past glorious performance. Being driven by the thought that he is about to retire from his life, he should blaze once more in that battlefield and bring the most glorious victory of his life. In comparison to his outdated war-strategy, General James Longstreet’s defensive strategy would be more effective. On the contrary, Colonel Chamberlain wins the battle because of his down-to-earth experience of war.

He is presented as the idealized citizen-soldier who has forsaken his comfortable teaching profession at Bowdoin College for the sake of his country and becomes a renowned soldier.