In the book “Across Five Aprils” by Irene Hunt, the author makes a few statements to portray her feelings toward the war, she uses the characters and their actions to show her emotions and thoughts about it. The views on war change throughout the book, in the beginning Tom and Jethro think war is going to be so cool, but as time went on their thoughts change. I believe one of her views from the book shows that she is passionate towards war, she uses Tom to demonstrate this. Tom is a soldier, and he is very passionate about what he does for the Union. Because he believes so much in the Union army, he dies while fighting for them. I think this proves the importance of the war seen by the author. If she didn’t feel this way about the war, why would she make a character feel so passionate for the Union. On the other hand I think the author wanted to show the readers that war was a difficult time for families. In the Creighton family they had two of the three of the family members joining the Union Army, while one of them left to fight for the Confederate Army. One night Jethro found Bill gathering his things on the hillside, he was preparing to join the confederate army. After he leaves the family doesn’t hear from Bill again except for John who found him as a captured soldier. John wrote to the family saying …show more content…
One example of this is when Eb returns home as a deserter. He is hiding in the woods and only made contact with Jethro. “It was a skeleton of a union soldier, though the uniform it wore was so ragged and filthy it was difficult to identify.” (Hunt, 149) This was taking place when Jeth met with Eb for the first time since he had became a deserter. Jethro could hardly recognize him, he wore ragged clothes, looked like a skeleton, and was filthy. This was used to show the bad side of the war, because the author has already included Tom’s views on war, Eb was the ticket to portray the bad side of