Patriot or Loyalist

Author's Note: This book was a hard choice to figure out the point of view but I pretty much explain how the story would be told from other people in the book and explain what Tim's point of view is on the Revolutionary War.

In the book My Brother Sam Is Dead by Christopher Collier ,Tim is a young boy who lives in Redding, Connecticut and his family are loyalists. His father is a man who think’s the war is just a stupid, pointless act against the king, while Sam,Tim’s older brother, is in college, but snuck away with some other men to join the Continental Army. So Tim’s father is not happy with Sam because he thinks that it’s God’s rule that men are supposed to be loyal to their king. Their mother is a loyalist but doesn’t care much of what Sam is doing she doesn’t want any part of it. The author is showing that Tim is not the bad guy here that he is just trying to get a good perspective of things, while Tim is pretty much in the middle of it all because he wants to obey his father but when he looks at same he thinks that he is the most intelligent and proud man especially when he came home with his Continental Army suit. Sam steals the family musket and takes off to join the cause while Tim is forced to become a man and help out with their farm and tavern. The father gets kidnapped and killed on a British ship so Tim was the man. Sam comes home because his team is resting in Redding and Sam gets executed by being accused of stealing his own cattle.

Tim doesn’t really pick a side of either loyalist or patriot because of how he was grown up with loyalists and seeing British troops do something horrible to the patriots. If Tim was just a loyalist then the story would have been how horrible the patriot’s are and if he was a patriot it would be the other way around. Having being able to see both sides was a good experience for him not just listening to Sam or their father. Therefore Tim’s point of view is that the war is just something that should have never happened or that there should be another way for the patriots to get their freedom.

Of course if the author didn’t tell the story from Tim’s point of view then the whole story would have changed. Take Sam for instance, if the story was told from his point of view then the story would just be about him in the war and actually that sounds pretty good. If the author did another book that takes place as Sam in the war, his point of view would all just be him in the war and how he thinks fighting for independence is worth dying for, which it is. Now it would be the same for author if he chose someone else's point of view. For most of the people who lived in Redding they were loyalists so the point of view from anyone in the town would be all about how great of a king king George is and how Sam is such a good almost grown up man and how smart and strong he is but that he is a traitor of the king and he should be banished from Redding or executed.

It is important that a great author has a well understood point of view and that the reader can find and understand it. The point of view for Tim is that he is in the middle of war and he is just trying to keep his mother safe, keep out of trouble, and to keep the tavern running to stay in business. His point of view will change a bit throughout the book but in the end his point of view is pretty clear that Tim was a  more of a pacifist.