52 pages • 1 hour read
C. S. ForesterRifleman Dodd
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1932A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Dodd finds a sheltered spot and begins the laborious process of reloading his weapon, pouring powder down the barrel and a small portion into the priming pan, then using hammer and ramrod to push the round bullet down the barrel; he’s tall, which helps. Thoroughly trained against foolish errors, Dodd performs these actions with precision. He rests and considers his situation. To catch up with his retreating regiment, he must evade the enemy that lies between. This will likely require many days. Dodd takes stock of his supplies—they’re ample—and begins to trek across the hillside, heading southeast in pursuit of the fleeing armies.
The hill ends, and Dodd peers down at a small valley twisting through hills, a creek flowing through it. Near the creek is a stone house, apparently abandoned but possibly patrolled by French. Dodd rejects it as too risky and edges along the hill toward a place well past it. He climbs down into a stand of beech trees and proceeds cautiously, one tree at a time. He forgets to look up into the trees he passes, and something strikes him on the shoulder, making him jump. A voice whispers, “Inglez?” Dodd whispers back, “Yes.” A young boy drops down from the tree, strangely dressed and walking awkwardly. He takes Dodd by the hand and walks him back to the stone house, where Dodd finds two bloodied bodies, both elderly, a man and a woman, her clothes pulled up above her waist.
The boy says, “‘Morran os Franceses!’ […] Death to the French!” (23). Dodd tidies up the woman’s clothing and folds her hands across her chest. The house appears looted; the boy pantomimes cavalrymen riding away. Dodd goes to the stream and drinks several canteen’s worth; the boy follows and drinks, his mouth directly in the stream. It’s getting dark, and Dodd must find a safe place to sleep. He climbs a nearby hill, followed by the boy, and settles in beneath some bushes at the summit. He pulls out food and starts to eat; the boy begs for some. Dodd tries to ignore him but finally gives him some biscuit and the remains of a beefy bone; the boy munches contentedly in the dark.
The rifleman notices a glow in the sky. He walks around the bushes and sees, about five miles away, the lights of the French campfires. The way they cluster gives Dodd hints as to the force’s size and disposition, but he merely wonders how he’ll maneuver past them in the coming days. He returns to his sheltered spot and is asleep in minutes.
Chapter 5 Summary
Dodd sleeps well and awakens at first light. The boy awakens, too. A light rain falls; mist obscures the distant French camp. Dodd prepares methodically for the day. He replaces damp primer powder with fresh, cleans his feet on surface dew, changes his socks, consumes some biscuit and a little water, tosses a bite of biscuit to his shivering companion, and sets out on a day’s march.
Dodd scans the countryside for danger: “Within the next two hours he might be dead or a prisoner, and captivity or death would be imminent all through the day” (30). Rain trickles into his clothes; the rocky path gnaws at the boy’s bare feet. They cross streams that grow deeper with rainwater, then climb a steep hill in a showery gale. From the top, he sees the French army, 100,000 strong, disappearing down a road, followed by a long train of hundreds of supply wagons, 50 cannons, and carts carrying the wounded. The boy whimpers in the cold but knows enough to stay down and keep as quiet as possible.
The army procession struggles up a steep pass. Soldiers clear stones, push on the carts, whip the overmatched horses and oxen, then detach the animals at the top of the hill and lead them back down to assist with pulling the next wagons. From the landscape, Dodd knows that a dozen more such hills await the plodding train. By now soaked to the skin, he must wait patiently until the entire army passes below him before he can advance.
Late in the afternoon, the last of the procession—the walking wounded followed by a rear guard—pass before him. There are no laggards, as the local Portuguese would torture and kill them. At twilight he descends, crosses the road, and continues, harried by a cold wind, his companion shivering and falling and scrambling to keep up. The wind dries their clothes.
Dodd finds another hillside, away from patrols, on which to sleep. Just before dawn, he’s awakened by hysterical laughter and delirious mumblings from the boy, who’s in the grip of a pneumonia fever. If Dodd stays with him, they’ll both die; if he carries him, he’ll never make it to the British lines. Dodd tries to make the boy comfortable and leaves him behind.
Chapter 6 Summary
Dodd travels on hillsides as much as possible and avoids villages for fear of French troops in them. The countryside is swept clear of people, crops, and animals, much of the landscape burned, so that the French have nothing local to resupply them. Dodd admires Wellington for the strategy. He doesn’t worry over its effects on the locals: Despite their recent improvement in battlefield readiness to “Light Division” levels, “Dodd had enough insular pride to consider Portuguese as not quite human” (37).
Hearing musket fire, Dodd climbs to a high hill to observe, hoping to find his fellow Britons engaged in a rear-guard action. Below, he sees a man on foot running frantically ahead of a French dragoon chasing him on horseback. Dodd fires at the galloping figure but misses; before he can reload, the dragoon slashes his sword at the runner, cutting him down, then stabbing him and forcing his horse to stomp on the victim. The dragoon trots away proudly. Sudden gunfire cuts down the horse; as the dragoon gets to his feet, Portuguese peasants grab him and lead him up the hill toward Dodd. He steps forward, but his dark uniform appears French, and they rush him. He cries, “Inglez,” and they halt. The leader inspects him and nods: “Inglez.”
The Portuguese return to their prisoner, whom they proceed to kick and beat. Dodd objects, calling out, in a few simple words in Spanish and Portuguese, that the Frenchman is a prisoner and mustn’t be tortured. The leader agrees and speaks to his men, who simply stab the prisoner to death with their bayonets. Dodd is horrified. The peasants remove the dead man’s clothes, divide them up, and put them on, blood and all, as they’re in better condition than their own garments.
The leader pantomimes that Dodd should follow them. Dodd points around and indicates that he’s searching for his fellow Inglezes, but the leader shakes his head. Dodd agrees to accompany them. They march for miles, over hills and through valleys, and finally climb up into rugged high hills. Burdened with his pack and exhausted from two days of much walking and little food, Dodd struggles to keep up.
They arrive at a narrow, cliff-edged plateau where 20 campfires blaze surrounded by guerrilla fighters. The leader takes Dodd to the far end, where a large fire crackles beneath an overhang. Two priests sit with a man in a shabby blue uniform, whom Dodd’s leader introduces as “Capitao Mor”—Great Leader. One priest makes gestures indicating that Dodd appears to be a Catholic, but Dodd, a proud Protestant, angrily objects and repeats in awkward Portuguese that he needs to reach the Tejo river. Capitao Mor calls to a teenage boy, Bernardino, who takes Dodd to another campfire and serves stew and bread to the famished Englishman. Sated, he quickly falls asleep.
Chapters 4-7 Analysis
From Chapter 4 through Chapter 7, Dodd begins his cross-country trek of return to the British lines. His travels take him through the barren wastes of a war-torn region.
The author mentions Dodd’s uniform—dark green with black buttons and trim—as a recent innovation designed to make English riflemen less conspicuous against the countryside than their brother soldiers in bright red. The British are barely 30 years removed from their debacle in America, where Yankee soldiers—who discarded the decorum of European warfare and wore hard-to-see dark uniforms—would hide in trees and fire at will on marching British troops who wore gaudy scarlet jackets.
Dodd is methodical, a killing machine loose behind enemy lines who’s absolutely determined to get back to his regiment. Still, he’s not ice-cold: He meets a boy with an intellectual disability and accepts, if reluctantly, his company; when he encounters the elderly dead couple, he’s offended by the gratuitous rape and murder and does what he can to bring some semblance of dignity to the deceased. England and France have had their battles over the centuries, and in the early 1800s there’s no love lost between them. Forester signals that Dodd remains humane even when the French behave barbarously.
The boy symbolizes the cruelties of war and its devastating effects on innocent civilians, which Dodd hates to see but can do little about. Dodd’s decision to abandon the boy when he contracts a fatal case of pneumonia makes wartime sense. His duty is to return to his regiment, an assignment that gets harder to complete with each passing day; meanwhile, were he to stay, there would be little he could do to prevent the boy’s death, little comfort he could give the boy in his delirium, and likely death for himself, were he to be captured or contract the boy’s disease.
Dodd holds the chauvinistic view that the Portuguese are not quite human. This attitude is extremely common among nations at the time, especially in Europe, where warfare was commonplace for centuries and people regarded their neighbors across the border with mild contempt. It’s easy today to deplore such an insensitive attitude, but in Dodd’s time, people believed it to be a virtue, in that they were expressing loyalty to their group, clan, or nation. If Dodd can’t be forgiven for his callousness, he can at least be understood as holding the standard view of the day. Dodd isn’t given to introspection. He has a “simple mind” (58) that’s satisfied with soldierly work. He’s not a psychopath, but his first loyalty is to his regiment, and, especially in a brutal war, his decisions must be cold-blooded.
