Same God, Different Dreams: Thoughts on Michael Shaara’s "The Killer Angels"

“There's nothing so much like a god on earth as a General on a battlefield.” 

- Michael Shaara, “The Killer Angels”

“The Killer Angels,” Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece of the Battle of Gettysburg, is and likely forever will be my favorite book; outstanding on a variety of levels, not least in its capacity for recreating the time and circumstances surrounding what still remains the largest and deadliest land battle in North American history. It is a work of literary art that effortlessly places us in that fierce, blood-drenched milieu to walk in the boot steps of famous, monochromatic figures of history like General Robert E. Lee, Lieutenant General James Longstreet, Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Brigadier General John Buford, General Lewis Armistead, General Winfield Scott Hancock and so many other real-life soldiers during those four horrific days of abominable warfare. 

Plato once famously opined “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” And it’s through Plato’s dictum that Shaara’s classic novel gets it right by infusing humanity and personality into the age-old art of warfare. Hellfire reigns, blood spills at the behest of destined attrition as 160,000 Union and Confederate troops collide on the rolling farmlands of southeast Pennsylvania in July 1863. Lead and canister, swords and cannon, Generals and foot soldiers, fathers and husbands, sons and brothers, death and destruction, shattered dreams and fallen heroes, action and inaction, pride and union.

In a span of four days, 50,000 Union and Confederate casualties were lost - dead, wounded and missing. And with swift force, clarity and power, Shaara’s remarkable novel captures the essence of this great American struggle, telling the extraordinary story from both sides.

Shaara’s complex yet engaging storyline, exquisite prose, skilled characterization and emotional allure within “The Killer Angels” fuse together to become its greatest strengths within its appeal and reasonings for what delivers the hearts of men into war. For the Union, it was defending a nation, its people and its cause. For the Confederacy, it was preserving a way of life and the political struggle for States’ Rights. The grand scale of the Battle of Gettysburg is resurrected, as well as what this battle meant for each side in a clash that, while hardly deciding the war's outcome, nevertheless placed a pronounced imprint in the course of how its narrative would rule ever afterward.

I’ve lost count as to how many times I’ve read “The Killer Angels” over the last few decades. It brings our nation’s history to life and moves me like no other book has. It makes sense of senseless tragedy. It sheds light on the inevitable suffering that arises from the flaws and differences of decent people, all separated not by any one God, but by different dreams.

“The Killer Angels” is simply an extraordinary work of American literature.