Character Clues

Character Analysis

Actions

This isn't a Jane Austen novel focused on people trying to talk and persuade each other; it's all about people killing each other with artillery bombardments and bayonets. And that kind of action helps demonstrate character in a really fundamental way. Think of it this way: when confronted with war, what do you do? If you run out of ammo, do you drop your rifle and run? Or do you do what Joshua Chamberlain does, and order a full-on bayonet charge? Here's the relevant passage:

Chamberlain raised his saber, let loose the shout that was the greatest sound he could make, boiling the yell up from his chest: Fix bayonets! Charge! Fix bayonets! Charge! Fix bayonets! Charge! He leaped down from the boulder, still screaming, his voice beginning to crack and give, and all around him his men were roaring animal screams, and he saw the whole Regiment rising and pouring over the wall and beginning to bound down through the dark bushes, over the dead and dying and wounded, hats coming off, hair flying, mouths making sounds, one man firing as he ran, the last bullet, last round. (3.4.204)

How each of the characters reacts to violence, death, uncertainty, and carnage reveals a lot about who that character is. We learn that Chamberlain is brave, for example, and that Garnett is willing to give up his life to regain his honor.

Clothing

The Union soldiers tended to wear blue uniforms, while the Confederates tended to wear gray, generally, but in reality, the Confederates had a more ragtag manner of dressing. Their uniforms can look kind of makeshift: "Then he [Chamberlain] saw the Rebs. Gray-green-yellow uniforms, rolling up in a mass. His heart seized him" (3.4.101).

The Confederates' haphazard uniforms help highlight the scrappiness of these soldiers—the fact that their army has been scrambled together in order to fight—and that says something about their character, as well. In contrast, we get to see the ostentatious dress of an Austrian Officer, observing the Confederate Army:

There was Ross, the fat Austrian with the Scotch name. He was all aglow in the powder-blue uniform of the Austrian Hussars, complete with shining silver chamberpot for the head, waving a blue plume. As he came closer Fremantle observed with alarm that the man was spotlessly groomed; even his mustache was waxed, the ends slim and sharp like wiggly rapiers. (3.1.8)

Direct Characterization

Shaara doesn't typically make judgments on characters, but he does let his characters make those judgments, and that can function as a type of direct characterization. Take this example, when Lee muses on Jubal Early:

Lee thought: Longstreet cannot stand the man. I wonder why? Something too cold here, something disagreeable in the silence of the eyes, the tilt of the head. Jubal. Strange name. Old Jubilee. Nothing happy about the man. And yet, unmistakable competence. (2.6.27)

It turns out Longstreet was pretty much right: Early later went on to participate in a major scam called the Louisiana Lottery, which cost Southerners a ton of money after the war.

Family Life

Tragically, three of General Longstreet's children died during the course of one terrible Christmas season. As you might guess, this makes Longstreet very unhappy—he won't even participate in poker games, anymore, which he used to enjoy. The deaths of his children have made his character more solemn and withdrawn. For example, at one point, General Lewis Armistead asks Longstreet how his wife is doing, and Longstreet says she's fine. Yet, afterwards, he thinks something else:

But she was not fine. He felt a spasm of pain like a blast of sudden cold, saw the patient high-boned Indian face, that beautiful woman, indelible suffering. Children never die: they live on in the brain forever. After a moment he realized that Armistead was watching him. (1.4.137)

On the Union side, Shaara uses Chamberlain's relationship with his father to illuminate some key points about Chamberlain's worldview. For one thing, Chamberlain's father inspires him to give the "Killer Angels" oration from which the book takes its title. But there is a kind of distance and reserve in Chamberlain's father, too—which is what makes his pleased reaction to the "Killer Angels" oration a nice memory for his son:

When he thought of the old man he could see him suddenly in a field in the spring, trying to move a gray boulder. He always knew instinctively the ones you could move, even though the greater part was buried in the earth, and he expected you to move the rock and not discuss it. A hard and silent man, an honest man, a noble man. Little humor but sometimes the door opened and you saw the warmth within a long way off, a certain sadness, a slow, remote, unfathomable quality as if the man wanted to be closer to the world but did not know how. (2.4.28)

Food

Throughout the book, there are references to "the soldier's disease." Um, yeah—so what's up what that? What is the soldier's disease?

Fremantle felt a familiar rumble in his own stomach. Oh God, not the soldier's disease. Those damned cherries. (3.1.32)

Oh. Diarrhea.

In the quote above, the soldiers have been gorging themselves on the fresh cherries growing everywhere in the middle of summer, and that's what has led to their gastro-intestinal eruptions. (Fact: dysentery killed more soldiers than any other disease during the Civil War.)

So, okay, we don't know if having the runs is actually a form of "characterization" or not. But there is a definite use of food to characterize someone in The Killer Angels, at least at one point. Chamberlain demonstrates his concern for his soldiers by worrying about whether it would be okay if he had some of the chicken reserved for officers. He doesn't want to get anything his men can't have—but he's also really hungry. Actually, he feels like he needs to eat, in order to be at his best as a soldier… so his hunger pangs win out. But he does manage to bring some back for his men, too:

The lieutenant asked if he could be of service. Chamberlain said no thanks, wondering how to conquer pride and if a general would part with some chicken, and then felt ashamed, because his boys had none and would be guilty to eat something up here, but on the other hand, don't get something soon, and keep losing blood, might pass out, in all this damned heat, like you did the other time, and be no good to anybody. (4.3.34)

Location

The Southerners have a totally romantic image of their geography. Being from the South seems to be more important to them than being from the North means to the Northerners; the Northerners are motivated more by principles—preserving the Union, freeing the slaves, ending aristocracy, and so on—than by loyalty to a specific place.

Nevertheless, Fremantle, an Englishman observing the Confederate army, is able to get in on the act, too:

Fremantle enjoyed himself enormously. Southerners! They were Englishmen, by George. Fremantle was at home. (3.1.12)

And again:

In the South there was one religion, as in England, one way of life. They even allowed the occasional Jew—like Longstreet's Major Moses, or Judah Benjamin, back in Richmond—but by and large they were all the same nationality, same religion, same customs. A little rougher, perhaps, but… my word. (3.1.81)

Still, this unified Southern culture is going to way of the dodo—it's headed towards extinction. The multicultural Union Army, made up of people with a variety of religions and ethnicities (including, before the war ends, African Americans), is going to carry the day—and the war itself. You can see this in the conversations between Kilrain and Chamberlain. Although they don't really romanticize Maine like the Southerners romanticize the South, they're convinced that they're fighting for great goals and aims.

Chamberlain, in fact, thinks that he could be at home anywhere:

Everywhere you go there's nothing but the same but the same rock and dirt and houses and people and deer and birds. They give it all names, but I'm at home everywhere. Odd thing: unpatriotic. I was at home in England. I would be at home in the desert. In Afghanistan or far Typee. All mine, it all belongs to me. My world. (2.4.32)

Chamberlain is fighting for equality and inconclusiveness. It's as if he wants to make the world hospitable for everyone, so that everyone else can feel as at home as he does.

Occupation

All these guys are soldiers, but all of them behave differently as soldiers. For example, not everyone would order a bayonet charge at an attacking enemy after running out of bullets, but that's exactly what Joshua Chamberlain does. He's a tough guy—though he's also sensitive and given to lyrical and philosophical meditations on different subjects.

The soldiers also see each other—and each other's roles in the army—is different ways. Reflecting on the character of generals, Chamberlain says to Tom: "Generals can do anything. Nothing quite so much like a God on earth as a general on a battlefield" (1.2.108). He reflects on his own comment to himself: "The General and God was a nice parallel. They have your future in your hands and they have all power and know all. He grinned, thinking of Meade surrounded by his angelic staff: Dan Butterfield, wild Dan Sickles" (1.2.108).

We don't get to enter Meade's head, but we do get to see the leading Confederate generals—Lee and Longstreet—in action. While Chamberlain sees generals as godlike, Lee—a general himself—feels that he's in the hands of a higher power. He and Longstreet, in fact, seem to become victims of fate; they don't seem to have control over the situation. From a foot soldier's perspective, these guys may seem seem godlike, but they themselves know the picture is way more complicated than that.

Physical Appearances

Throughout the novel, physical appearances hint at different truths about the characters. Consider Harrison the spy, for example:

The little man was there: a soggy spectacle on a pale and spattered horse. He sat grinning wanly from under the floppy brim of a soaked and dripping hat. Lightning flared behind him; he touched his cap. (1.1.15)

The irony is that this bedraggled figure brings tidings that will lead to the largest and most important battle of the Civil War. On the other hand, we have General Pickett, a dashing and dandy Southern gentleman:

One plumed rider waved a feathered hat: that would be George Pickett. At a distance he looked like a French king, all curls and feathers. (1.4.49)

There's more irony here: this romantic and cavalier figure ends up being totally devastated by the battle: his division is almost entirely destroyed when Lee orders him to attack the Union line. So, appearances can be deceiving…

Sex and Love

Let's fact it: there's not much sex in this book—it's more about violence than sex. Still, Chamberlain's sexy memories of his wife help establish that he's missing her:

He had dreamed of her in the night, dreamed of his wife in a scarlet robe, turning witchlike to love him. Now when he closed his eyes she was suddenly there, hot candy presence. Away from her, you loved her more. The only need was her; she the only vacancy in the steamy morning. He remembered her letter, the misspelled words: 'I lie here dreamily.' Even the misspelling is lovely. (3.2.2)

As a married soldier, sex is one of the things Chamberlain is giving up in order to fight for the Union cause. He has to keep this ascetic discipline in order serving his country and ideals. For him, this isn't the time for love and domesticity—it's a time for war.

Social Status

While Chamberlain is fighting to end slavery and the aristocracy, his friend Buster Kilrain doesn't seem to care too much about the plight of African Americans. Instead, he's pumped to destroy the Southern gentility. When Chamberlain says he's fighting for equality, Kilrain says:

"Equality? Christ in Heaven. What I'm fighting for is the right to prove I'm a better man than many… What matters is justice. 'Tis why I'm here. I'll be treated as I deserve, not as my father deserved. I'm Kilrain, and I God damn all gentlemen. I don't know who me father was and I don't give a damn. There's only one aristocracy, and that's right here—" he tapped his white skull with a thick finger— "and you, Colonel laddie, are a member of it and don't even know it." (3.2.107)

Part of the reason that Kilrain and others like him don't like the Southern aristocracy is that it seems like a weird holdover from the bad old days in Europe. Aristocracy is not really in line with American democracy; it has more to do with the old world of nobility and titles—exactly what many of the settlers in the United States were trying to escape. Kilrain wants a meritocracy, a place where people are judged by their actual worth, not by who their parents or grandparents were. For him, the South is standing in the way of that goal.

Speech and Dialogue

Speech and dialogue might be Shaara's second most important way of developing character. Just take Joshua Chamberlain, who is totally a professor of rhetoric. Rhetoric actually comes in handy now and then for Chamberlain, like when he uses his public-speaking skills to articulate his opposition to slavery and urge his soldiers to fight. We get to see Chamberlain's personality and morality through these public words:

This is a different kind of army. If you look at history you'll see men fight for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. They fight for land, or because a king makes them, or just because they like killing. But we're here for something new. I don't… this hasn't happened much in the history of the world. We're an army going out to set other men free. (1. 2. 140)

From the other side of the battlefield, captured Southerners talk about their "rats," as relayed by Tom Chamberlain, who doesn't immediately understand that what they're talking about it their "rights." The Southerners' words provide an opposing view of what the war:

"…They were farm-type fellers. We asked them why they were fighting this war, thinkin' on slavery and all, and one fella said they was fightin' for their "rats." Hee. That's what he said.' Tom giggled, grinned. 'We all thought they was crazy, but we hadn't heard a-right. They kept on insistin' they wasn't fightin' for no slaves, they were fightin' for their "rats." It finally dawned on me that what the feller meant was their 'rights,' only, the way they talk, it came out 'rats.' Hee. Then after that I asked this fella what rights he had that we were offendin', and he said, well, he didn't know, but he must have some rights he didn't know nothin' about. Now ain't that something?" (3.2.46)

Thoughts and Opinions

Closely tied in with speech and dialogue are thoughts and opinions—probably Shaara's most important way of developing character, since the whole book revolves around a debate over slavery and secession. The Battle of Gettysburg is really a continuation of that debate—just with cannons and guns and bayonets rather than words. To start with, we get to see the views of a New England abolitionist, Joshua Chamberlain, who disapproves of slavery. He remembers arguing with a Southern visitor about the question: "I tried to point out that a man is not a horse, and he replied, very patiently, that that was the thing I did not understand, that a Negro was not a man. Then I left the room" (3.2.102).

But Chamberlain's friend Kilrain has somewhat different ideas about why they're fighting. He sees the Southern aristocracy as something that keeps Northern freemen down and prevents people from being judged on their own merits: "The point is that we have a country here where the past cannot keep a good man in chains, and that's the nature of the war. It's the aristocracy I'm after. All that lovely, plumed, stinking chivalry. The people who look at you like a piece of filth, a cockroach, ah" (3.2.109).

Now, the opinions and thoughts we hear don't always relate to the war. For instance, we get to hear what General Lee thinks about God and destiny, a huge theme running throughout the book. Lee's views contrast pretty strongly with Kilrain's atheism and lack of belief in the "divine spark": "He believed in a Purpose as surely as he believed that the stars above him were really there. He thought himself too dull to read God's plan, a servant only. And yet sometimes there were glimpses" (3.6.13).