Jan 1, 2010

The Killer Angels | Style

Recurring Metaphor
The title of the book points to a metaphor that recurs in the book. Before the first battle, Buford notices in the cemetery, among the gravestones, a statue of a “white angel, arm uplifted, a stony sadness.” After the first battle, Buford stops in the cemetery but cannot find the white angel. It is as if the brutality of the battle has driven away this divine image.

The metaphor recurs, but with a shift in meaning, later in the novel, when Chamberlain recalls learning a speech from Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, in which man in...