My Brother Sam is Dead: Thematic Analysis

Throughout the book, My Brother Sam is Dead, Tim Meeker is a young boy who goes through a lot of changes. Not just physically, but mentally. He sees everything through different eyes as the war changes him. In the beginning, he is naive, innocent, confused, obedient, dutiful, and very impressionable. Then, throughout the book, things start to change his state of mind. When Sam joins the rebels, Tim is still a little boy, with the mentality of a little boy. He still admires his older brother. When the war starts to become a slight reality, Mr. Heron hires him to send a message. He starts to become a bit more headstrong and disobedient. After that, life starts to cave in on him and his family. He and his father take a trip to Verplank’s point; there his father is arrested for selling beef to the British. Tim is still confused and doesn’t know which side of this war to take. That experience has made him mature, he doesn’t try to avoid his chores and he willingly helps his mother with anything now that he is the man of the house. He is obedient but a free thinker. When Sam dies, Tim is a man mentally. War had changed him and now he realizes just how much the war had changed his brother. Tim Meeker learns that glory is an illusion because he witnesses firsthand how values degenerate during war.

Sam is always looking for glory. That was the main reason he joined the Rebel army. Tim sees Sam as glorious at the beginning of the book and always wanted Sam to tell him about the “telling points” he made during debates in college. He always wanted to be glorious like Sam. Sam has always sought out glory, even before the war. He finds it too, by doing things that bring him attention. Even at the end of the book when he is starving, he doesn’t stop trying to find glory in the war. He never realizes that it is an illusion. Tim loses that illusion, but it takes him many deaths to realize there is no glory in war. He realizes that neither army is glorious and both do wrong deeds against the innocent people and their own neighbors.

Tim has lost his illusions of war through witnessing what inglorious things that both armies have done. He witnesses how all values degenerate during war. To be a soldier, killing is a requirement. They have to kill anyone at a moments notice, even their own fathers. By doing things such as these, a soldier’s values slowly slip away. This is what Tim saw. He saw a messenger get shot from his horse. He saw a man get decapitated during a small fight. He heard about men killing a boy who he knew and of soldiers stealing from starving families so they could feed themselves. He also heard about people being tarred and feathered for being Tory or Rebel. He witnesses terrible things by both armies. He realized that war wasn’t glorious, it was a disturbing destruction of morals.