85 pages • 2 hours read
Harold KeithRifles for Watie
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1957A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Jeff’s Dogs
From the beginning of the novel, Jeff has three dogs that represent three phases of his personal growth and change during the war. Ring is his childhood dog. He symbolizes Jeff’s youthful rebellion for the sake of love. When he leaves, he has a challenging time stopping Ring from following him. He even considers throwing rocks at his beloved dog to make him go home. Jeff must leave his childhood behind to fight in the war. Four years later, Ring is the first to greet Jeff when he arrives home. He takes a moment to recognize Jeff, but then makes it clear that he has been waiting for his best friend to come back. As an adult, Jeff can reconnect with his childhood best friend without fear of remaining a child.
When Jeff finds the dog he names Dixie, he shows the permeability of the two sides, foreshadowing his ability to recognize that there are good humans on both the Union and the Confederacy. Dixie shows how basic affection and kindness supersedes ideology on an animal level. She is mourning for her first master and then allows herself to be lured away and reclaimed. Her name, like Jeff’s name, is a contradiction, since it represents the south when she switches her loyalty to the north. Dixie then switches again to live with the Washbournes, and ultimately will likely belong to the hybrid family that will result when Jeff and Lucy get married. Jeff’s ability to connect with dogs and other animals mirrors his kindness and ability to do the same with humans.
By winning over Sully, Jeff shows that even a bloodhound, who he expects to attack him aggressively, can be lured into a new loyalty with the right tactics. Sully is ugly, but responds to love, affection, and food, which represents both. With Sully, Jeff learns to turn what might have been a weakness – his compassion for those working for the enemy—into a strength. This ability to feel compassion nearly thwarts his mission when he considers staying with the rebels, but ultimately helps him escape. While he might have chosen to hurt or kill Sully, an action that would undoubtedly have challenged the ability of readers to feel sympathy for Jeff, he offers love instead. This allows Jeff to complete his journey without leaving a trace for his pursuers to follow. In the end, Ring and Sully meet, confronting each other questioningly just as Jeff’s family must become reacquainted with him upon his return.
Rifles and Other Weapons
During World War I and World War II, changing technology shifted the landscape of weaponry in war. More efficient weapons led to a mechanization of war and death and a disconnect between the person firing and the person being killed. The use of weapons in the novel, which was written over a decade after World War II, reflects this increased depersonalization. At first, Jeff joins the war because he is “sick of fighting ‘em with a hay sickle” (26). He is taking on bushwhackers who are threatening his family but fighting them one at a time is ineffectual. The musket and bayonet he receives give him the ability to shoot from a distance. Although it takes more than a year before he is able to use his weapons in battle, he is proud of them.
When Jeff sees Orff’s seven-shooter, he is amazed and envious. The rifle requires less conscious effort and choice with each shot, unlike Jeff’s rifle, which must be refilled with each round. Orff’s shooting during their scouting mission shows that the rifle is faster and deadlier. Jeff is surprised to discover that most of the Confederate soldiers in Watie’s outfit are equipped with makeshift weapons, especially considering how efficiently they manage to fight with them. The ability to mechanize death more easily will create a huge advantage over the Union army. Although the Civil War occurs 80 years before the atomic bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the growing arms race depicted in the book reflects the anxieties of the real-life arms race in the Cold War.
Blue and Gray Uniforms
The uniforms for both armies symbolize the ideologies of the sides they represent, and at the beginning of the novel, those sides are clear and discrete. At first, Jeff cannot wait to have his own uniform, and marches into the first battle (which he doesn’t participate in) in clothing that is not quite a real Union uniform. Those who die in those uniforms, die before becoming a full member of the Union army. When Jeff finally receives a uniform, he is disappointed that it is too big. Although he manages to procure one that fits, the overly large uniform represents his youth and unreadiness for the battles ahead. Jeff also notes that the uniforms reinforce a manufactured hierarchy, as when he sees Henry Slaughter, a man from his hometown who enlisted before he did and is already an officer. Jeff realizes that “two neighbors of yesterday could today be separated by an impassable gulf when two bits’ worth of tinsel was pinned on the shoulders of one and not the other” (42).
Throughout the war, the discrete line between the two uniforms starts to blur. When Lucy repairs Jeff’s coat, she uses a button from a Confederate uniform. Not only does the button have significance as belonging to her father, but it shows how she places a mark on Jeff that compromises his determined support for the Union. As a spy, Jeff wears a full Confederate uniform, despite the mismatch between his ideology and how he presents. The presentation of the uniform makes Lucy believe, however briefly, that Jeff has defected. When the rebel soldiers attack the supply boat, they salvage Union uniforms since they need clothing. The mixture of Union clothing into the rebel wardrobe confuses Jeff when he sees Clardy’s men and assumes that they must be rebels wearing their Union uniforms. At the end, Jeff looks at his shirt with sergeant stripes and feels disconnected from what he once saw as integral to his identity.
