The Drummer Boy of Shiloh
By Ray Bradbary
In the drummer for Shiloh there are a
few metaphors that are very meaningful. In the very beginning the author talks
about peach blossoms. I later figured out that this is a metaphor for Joby and
other young soldiers. I think this was the metaphor for the youth and Innocence
of the young men who had never seen war. I think that’s because in the life of
the peach the blossom would be the youth. Also when you think of a blossom you
think of a pure pink pretty flower as opposed to a violent ugly one.
Another metaphor is “ for we here
with the careless bones of the young men, harvested by night and bindled around
your fires, with the similarly
where the similarly strewn steel bones of their rifles with bayonet
fixed like eternal lightning lost in the orchard grass.” I think this is a
metaphor for the rifles being alive. Even though this is more like
personification, it still shows the relation from the soldiers haphazardly
laying around the guns that are also haphazardly laying around.
The third metaphor I noticed was when he thinks to himself “
had he seen the ocean ever, seen the waves rolling in like a well ordered cavalry
charge to the sand?” Even though
he hadn’t seen the ocean, he knew what a cavalry charge was meant to be and could probably
guess that the waves charged together as one force, showing Joby that this is
what he needed to do.
