How would you feel if your older brother just decided to fling himself into a war? How would you feel if that brother of yours was you only role model, and your only mentor? In the book My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier, that is exactly how Tim feels. His older brother Sam comes home from college one day and proudly announces that he has joined the patriots to fight the British. Tim and his family are not sure what to think. They have been British there whole life, and now the other member of the family has somehow decided to go to war and fight for the other side. It is a death sentence for Sam, and his family knows it. But what if Sam were telling the story and not Tim? Would the book be the complete opposite?
If Sam were to be the one narrating the book, many of the main parts would be different. For example, when Sam first heads off to fight the British, his family thinks that it is the dumbest idea ever thought of. Sam on the other hand thinks that it is an opportunity to become free from the mother country. If he had told the story then he would make it sound like the rest of his family were the dumb ones, and he and the other patriots were the ones who knew what they were doing. If the book had gone Sam’s way, then he would not have been killed at the end. Sam told Tim to butcher the cattle that they had, or otherwise it would have been stolen. Tim decided not to butcher the cattle, and some troops did try to steal them. Sam tried to stop them, but they beat him up and put him in jail for an attempted cattle theft even though he didn’t do it. The general decided to have him shot for the attempted theft. If Sam would have been telling the story, the cows would have been butchered, and he would not have died. The book would have changed completely, and the title would even have to be changed.
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