War is full of onslaught, violence, and brutality, but also war is also an entity where you can choose to fight for your freedom and end injustice. The cons of war, like the senseless brutality, for when men try to be a deserter, they will lose their life. The pros are fighting for your freedom and ending injustice; if your country wins the war, you get your freedom and you stop unnecessary deaths. In My Brother Sam is Dead, the Collier brothers show that war has many pros and cons to it. Tim decides to be neutral, due to the tragic deaths of his best friend Jerry, his father Life, and his brother Sam.
Jerry was Tim’s best friend; they went fishing together, went to church together, and worked together. Jerry was a young ten year-old civilian, who was captured, put on a prison ship, and he caught a
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Every year, Life would take either Sam, Tom, or Tim to Verplanck's Point to sell the cattle, so they could buy things for the tavern. Life was captured by the Loyalists and put on one of their prison ships; while he was on the prison ship, Life caught cholera that about fifty other people caught and he died. Tim reveals the story to the readers about what happened to his father, Life: “...That’s what happened to Father: they’d hand an epidemic of cholera on the prison ship he’d been on. About forty or fifty people had died from it, and he’d been one of them. They’d buried him someplace on Long Island, but we weren’t sure where.”(165). Life was a Loyalist, his death was different because he was captured and put on a Loyalist prison ship. Tim expected that loyalty would be rewarded, but it isn’t in this case. Tim decided to be a Loyalist at first because his father was one, but when he realized they don’t reward loyalty, he decided not be a Loyalist anymore. If Tim chooses a side he wants to be rewarded for his loyalty not killed for it, this is why Tim decided to be