The Drummer Boy of Shiloh

            

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.