Revolutionary War

Have you ever lost a family member in war? Could you imagine watching them die in your own front yard. Canons blowing everywhere. Explosions of gunsmoke dissolving into the sky. Soldiers falling one by one. In the movie The Patriot, directed by Roland Emmerich, this fantasy becomes real, unlike in the book written by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier, My Brother Sam is Dead. There are many similarities and differences between these two portrayals of war, though.
I was surprised at how much these two pieces were alike. In both, the father’s aren’t so fond about their oldest sons fighting in the war, but the sons go anyway. There are a lot of similar characters too. In The Patriot there’s a widowed father, an older son, another younger son, and two british leaders as main characters. My Brother Sam is Dead includes a married father of two children, a younger son and an older son, and two british leaders who are highlighted characters. Some events that happen too, are similar, such as the British leaders in both killing the oldest son. Overall the book and movie were a lot more alike than I thought they would be.
Even though there were a boatload of similarities between these two, there were quite a few differences too. In The Patriot the father doesn’t die, but in My Brother Sam is Dead, the father gets captured by some road side Loyalists and ends up passing away on a prisoner ship, leaving the younger son to be the leader of the family. Another difference is that the father in My Brother Sam is Dead doesn’t fight with the son in war, whereas the father in The Patriot fights alongside his son.
These two examples of what the Revolutionary War was like were similar and different in more ways than one. Both of these pieces modeled what war was like back then in an easily understandable way, which made both very appealing to experience. This was a great way to help me learn about the Revolutionary War and I’m glad that I got to learn about it this way.