Essay On My Brother Sam Is Dead

Some people still wonder if war can be justified by its principles or cause. It can be argued that war can be justified due to the principles of freedom and justice that soldiers are willing to die for. However, many argue against this saying that war should be avoided at all costs due to collateral damage and the massive loss of innocent life. In the book My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier, Tim faces the biggest dilemma of his life when he has to decide whether to side with his brother who believes in the principles of war or his father who believes war should be avoided at all costs. When the novel comes to a conclusion, Tim decides that he is neutral and does not agree to either argument due to the irony contained within the deaths of

Life was a loyalist who believed the people should try to avoid war and just listen to their ruler. Life had been captured by cowboys and taken onto a prisionship where he was killed by a highly contagious disease called cholera. Tim expressed, “There was one funny thing about it though - it wasn’t a rebel prison ship, it was a British one’ (164). Life had been killed by the men that he was supporting in the war which demonstrated to Tim that him being loyal to Britain got him nowhere. This made him a Loyalist because he had strong negative opinions about war due to his past traumatic experiences with it. Tim would have expected Life to be the most safe one of their family due to his loyalty to Britain, but he was captured anyway. The death of Life Meeker makes Tim develop a strong hatred toward the Loyalists due to the fact that they do not value loyalty or care about the innocent, such as this instance. Tis develops Tim’s final decision of neutrality is influenced by Jerry’s death because both the British and Patriots caused the death of the ones he cared most