The Killer Angels

The Killer Angels

The Killer Angles takes place between Monday, June 29, 1863 and Friday, July 3, 1863. The story tells the Unions and Confederates point of view, of the battle of Gettysburg and how the battle took place. The book vividly describes battle physically and emotionally how each person feels. Although the book is historical fiction, it is based on events that occurred and can be partially considered historical nonfiction. The individual characters are described in the point of view of the author. The book is written in four parts to show the chronological order of the days before the battle, and each part has individual chapters in the point of view of different people. The story is told by two different points of views, the Confederacy and the Union. Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet mainly showed the Confederate point of view, and Joshua Chamberlain mainly showed the Union’s point of view. The book begins with the North Virginian army heading north, aiming for Pennsylvania, and the Potomac army is heading south towards the opposing army. This eventually leads to a confrontation at Gettysburg, and The Killer Angel’s shows how each army individually made their way to the battle.

The main theme of the book is death in warfare. Many people died in the story and people were injured. A scene in the novel when Chamberlain is defending against confederates it describes how soldiers were killed. Chamberlain runs and sees dead men, ten, fifteen, and lumps of gray, blood splattering everywhere (p. 236). This was a scene where Longstreet was attacking Union soldiers at a peach orchard, and Chamberlain’s men came to help and Chamberlain was surrounded with dead bodies. The scene was described to show that death was everywhere in war and soldiers had to continue moving on ignoring their fallen comrades. Later a soldier asked Chamberlain, “Colonel, Request permission to go pick up some of our wounded,” (p. 239). The soldier wasn’t able to go back and this...