Have you ever felt too young for something? As if
the world expects you to act older than you are? I have always felt this way. I
am one of the youngest people in the 8th grade. I’m only twelve, and
I turn thirteen at the end of November. When I was four, I was in my third year
of preschool, and my parents felt like I didn’t need a fourth year because my
teachers had said I was highly intelligent. So I went into kindergarten as a
four-year old. Ever since then, I have always felt a tiny bit out of it. As if
all the other kids were smarter than me just because of the one-year age
difference. That they knew more things then I did. In “The Drummer Boy of
Shiloh” by Ray Bradbury, I feel like Joby is experiencing this as well.
Joby is younger than all the other
soldiers. The youngest of the troop is eighteen, while Joby is only fourteen.
Joby feels isolated from the other boys, the deserted island in the middle of
the vast sea, the lake in the desert, the drummer boy in an army. The night
before his first battle, Joby has no one to talk to, no one to calm his fears.
He feels scared and doesn’t think he’ll live through the battle. He thinks the
other soldiers are better prepared than he is. “Me. I only got a drum, two sticks to beat it, and no shield.” I
think Joby is jealous of the soldiers’ shields. In the literal term, they do
have real, metal shields, but also figuratively they have the shield of
immortality. A soldier thinks he will live through the battle, he wishes and
hopes with all his heart, because no one can imagine that they will ever die,
then he feels like he is immortal, which is the only reason he marches into
battle. Joby is not feeling immortal. He knows he will be at the front of the
army with only his drum. He knows he will take the heat of the gunfire. He
knows he will die, he doesn’t romantically fantasize that he won’t, he accepts
it. And that’s why he cries.
When the general comes to visit
Joby, Joby describes the general’s scent as “fatherly”. Joby needs someone to
look up to, and the general is the perfect person, better than any soldier in
the army. He needs a fatherly figure to look up to, and the general is the
father of the army. The general tells Joby it’s okay to cry, that Joby is the
heart of the army, that it’s Joby’s job to keep the mens’ spirits going with a
solid fast beat on the drum, and that the men and Joby are all equal. “There’s your cheek, fell right off the tree
overhead. Raw, raw the lot of you.” This makes Joby feel equal to the men,
not a sad, young drummer boy who no one cares about. The general then mentions
that he cried last night as well. I don’t think the general actually cried last
night. I think he said that to show Joby that it’s all right to be scared, to
give Joby the feeling that if the general is scared, that the father of the
army is scared, then it’s okay for Joby to be scared too. The general also gives
Joby a purpose in battle, making Joby feel more included and important. The
general changes the way Joby thinks about the battle and the army as well.
Joby felt as if he had no purpose in
the army. I felt as if the other kids were smarter than me. He felt as if he
was too young, too small to be in a big army. That the only thing for him to do
was to bang his drum and take the heat of the gunfire. After he talked with the
general, Joby now has a purpose. He is the heart of the army: the sound beneath
the footsteps of the marching men. He decides if they walk fast or slow. He
decides if they are strong or weak. He is no longer a fourteen-year-old banging
on a drum in front of a whole army with no shield to protect him from enemy
fire. No, he is the drummer boy at Shiloh.
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