Across Five Aprils

“I heered some of the big fellers talkin’ the other night, and they said the war, even if it comes, will be no more than a breafas’ spell. They said that soldiers up here kin take the South by the britches and make it holler ‘Nough’ quicker than it takes coffee to cool off fer swallerin’.”

In this line of dialogue, young Jethro is speaking to his mother, who is anxious about the war that is about to begin. As with the previous quote, this line demonstrates not only Jethro’s ignorance about the realities of war, but also the ignorance of Tom and Eb (the “big fellers”). The boys believe that the North will win easily and quickly, a statement which is steeped in ominous dramatic irony, as most readers will likely already be aware of how long and painful the Civil War actually was.

“War meant loud brass music and shining horses ridden by men wearing uniforms finer than any suit in the stores at Newton; it meant men riding like kings, looking neither to the right nor the left, while lesser men in perfect lines strode along with guns across their shoulders, their heads held high like horses with short reins. When the battle thundered and exploded on all sides—well, some men were killed, of course, but the stories of war that Jethro remembered were about the men who had managed to live through the thunder and explosion […] [Jethro] never doubted that if Tom and Eb got their chance to go to war, they’d be back home when it was over, and that it would be shadowy men from distant parts who would die for the pages of future history books.”

Jethro imagines war through vivid imagery that has been planted in his head by his brothers and the stories of past wars that he’s read about: music, horses, heroic men in uniforms. The images in his mind all evoke a sense of masculine glory and adventure, and Jethro prefers to focus on those impressions while casually dismissing the fact that people die in wars. He knows this is true, but the understatement, “some men were killed, of course, but…” characterizes Jethro as a boy who does not yet fully understand the pain and grief of death.

“He had great confidence in his father, but his sense of justice was hard put to accept the fact that Travis Burdow had been allowed to escape the consequences of his drunken crime. It occurred to him that he felt the same way toward his father as he did toward Abraham Lincoln—why should the President waver so long? [...] Jethro had to admit to himself an uncomfortable feeling of anger for both the President and his father; they had not shown the hard, unyielding attitude that he admired in the talk of Tom and Eb and their friends.”

In this quote, Jethro draws a direct parallel between his father, the patriarch of the large Creighton family, and Abraham Lincoln, the father of the entire country. Although Jethro has great respect for both men, at this young age he cannot understand their reluctance to enact revenge on those who have wronged them (Travis Burdow and the South, respectively). This quote further characterizes Jethro as being somewhat naïve, with a simplistic understanding of the world.

“Human nature ain’t any better one side of a political line than on the other—we all know that—but human nature, the all-over picture of it, is better than it was a thousand—five hundred—even a hundred years ago. There is an awakenin’ inside us of human decency and responsibility. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t grieve fer the children I’ve buried; I wouldn’t look for’ard to the manhood of this youngest one.”

“Jethro felt as if he were bursting with the tumult inside him. The thought of war had given him a secret delight, only a matter of hours before; it had meant something of the same kind of joy he had known while watching the young men race their horses up and down the road past the cabin on a Sunday afternoon; or it had meant the kind of excitement that was half-terror when, in the early days of the school term, he had watched Shadrach Yale fight a local bully who was trying to break up classes […] Suddenly he was deeply troubled. He groped toward an understanding of something that was far beyond the excitement of guns and shouting men; but he could not find what words to define what he felt, and that lack left him in a turmoil of frustration.”

“Jethro felt as if he were bursting with the tumult inside him. The thought of war had given him a secret delight, only a matter of hours before; it had meant something of the same kind of joy he had known while watching the young men race their horses up and down the road past the cabin on a Sunday afternoon; or it had meant the kind of excitement that was half-terror when, in the early days of the school term, he had watched Shadrach Yale fight a local bully who was trying to break up classes […] Suddenly he was deeply troubled. He groped toward an understanding of something that was far beyond the excitement of guns and shouting men; but he could not find what words to define what he felt, and that lack left him in a turmoil of frustration.”

As Jethro listens to the adults at the supper table discuss their conflicting views about the war, he gets his first hint of understanding that war will not be the exciting masculine adventure he has been imagining. Yet he is still too young for these thoughts to fully form. This moment serves as further characterization of Jethro, showing his naivete regarding the war but also his thoughtful, observant nature. This is one of the first small moments of character growth for Jethro, when his thought process begins to gain more nuance, foreshadowing further growth and change to come.

“I don’t know if anybody ever ‘wins’ a war, Jeth. I think that the beginnin’s of this war has been fanned by hate till it’s a blaze now; and a blaze kin destroy him that makes it and him that the fire was set to hurt.”

This line of dialogue from Bill reflects one of the novel’s primary claims about war: that nobody ever truly wins, and it hurts everyone involved. Although Bill is opposed to fighting for the North and later leaves to join the Confederate army, this quote and others characterize Bill as someone who would much prefer not to fight at all. He doesn’t truly believe in the cause of either the North or the South, but sees the war as an escalation of blind hatred between both sides.

“The South and the North and the East and the West—we all started it. The old slavers of other days and the fact’ry owners of today that need high tariffs to help ’em git rich and the new territories and the wild talk […] I hate slavery, Jeth, but I hate another slavery of people workin’ their lives away in dirty fact’ries fer a wage that kin scarce keep life in ’em; I hate secession, but at the same time I can’t see how a whole region kin be able to live if their way of life is all of a sudden upset; I hate talk of nullification, but at the same time I hate laws passed by Congress that favors one part of a country and hurts the other.”

In this quote, Bill confesses to Jethro his true views about the war through a series of contrasts. He blames the conflict on both the individuals who brought the trading of enslaved people to America and the industrialists whom he believes are the real motivation behind the North’s declaration of war on the South. Bill sees both sides as equally culpable, and sees the abuse of wage laborers in Northern factories as comparable to the chattel slavery of the South. Although Bill’s criticism of abusive factory owners and unjust laws certainly have merit, many modern readers will likely disagree that these problems are equally as evil as the horrors of slavery. Bill’s characterization in this quote shows that while he has a strong sense of justice and morality, his viewpoints are inevitably limited by his culture and personal experiences.

“On that afternoon in the autumn of ’61, he made one of his rare visits to the hill, drawn to it by the beauty of the surrounding woods and perhaps by the somber mood of the times. He no longer talked to the children though; a phase of innocence had passed, which would never be recaptured.”

Walnut Hill is a symbolic setting in the story which represents death and the loss of innocence. Throughout the course of the war, Jethro is forced to face death and loss many more times; these experiences are intertwined with his development from childhood to adulthood.

“He had heard cries often that autumn, all through the countryside. They came at night, wakened him, and then lapsed into silence, leaving him in fear and perplexity. Sounds once familiar were no longer as they had seemed in other days—his father calling cattle in from the pasture, the sheep dog’s bark coming through the fog, the distant creak of the pulley as Ellen drew water for her chickens—all these once familiar sounds had taken on overtones of wailing, and he seemed to hear an echo of that wailing now.”

In Across Five Aprils, the setting itself often reflects the mood of the characters as well as the nation as a whole. As the Civil War upends the peace and security of the nation, the land itself seems to become unfamiliar, ominous and sad. A dramatic shift has occurred in the world around Jethro, and the safety of his childhood has been replaced with uncertainty and fear. The descriptive imagery in this passage suggests that the land itself is crying out in pain and grieving the tragedy of the war.

“You’re right, Jeth. I can’t offer positive proof that there are no witches. And my anger is not with people who believe that witches actually lived back in the mountains where your mother was a girl. They have a right to their belief—as I have to mine. But I’m scornful of people who are so sure of something they can’t prove that they’ll torture or kill anyone who is accursed, the ones who would have been in a hurry to cry ‘Witch’ to an odd old woman if they heard that she’d been humming ‘Seven Stars’ on the day their best cow died.”

This dialogue from Shad connects to a broader theme of moral certainty versus moral ambiguity. Shad expresses to Jethro the danger of putting such blind faith in your own moral correctness that you are willing to act out in violence toward others. Shad’s criticism of those who make baseless accusations of “witchcraft” as a justification for violence foreshadows the “witch-hunts” later carried out by men like Guy Wortman, who baselessly accuses the Creightons of being Southern sympathizers as a justification for terrorizing them.

“Now he was to learn what it meant to be the man of a family at ten. He had worked since he could remember, but his work had been done at the side of some older member of the family; when he had grown tired, he was encouraged to rest or sometimes he was dismissed from the task altogether. Now he was to know labor from dawn till sunset; he was to learn what it meant to scan the skies for rain while corn burned in the fields, or to see a heavy rainstorm lash grain from full, strong wheat stalks, or to know that hay, desperately needed for winter feeding, lay rotting in a wet quagmire of a field.”

After his father has a heart attack, Jethro is forced to step into adulthood more than ever before. This quote highlights the theme of resilience and endurance as a key factor in becoming an adult. As a child, Jethro’s mother allowed him to rest when he was tired, but now that the responsibility of managing the farm falls on Jethro’s shoulders, he must persevere no matter how tired he is or what obstacles he faces. This quote also describes how the tide of fate can turn unpredictably, just as it does for the Union soldiers in the war.

“It was coal oil. That was a kind of punishment favored by mobs and self-appointed judges—coal oil in the culprit’s well. It could cause him any amount of labor and anguish; it took little time or intelligence or skill, and it released most effectively the malice and spite of those who took punishment into their own hands.”

Guy Wortman and his gang represent the kind of people that Bill and Shad criticized earlier for being so blindly sure of their own correctness that they use it as justification to commit violence against others. As Ross Milton points out, such people do not even have the courage to face their supposed enemies out in the open, as soldiers do. The actions of Wortman and those who follow him further help to complicate the issue of which side is “good” and which side is “evil.”

“The tragedy of that summer had never impressed Jethro so deeply as it did that afternoon when the dates stared up at him with terrible significance.”

Jethro’s increasing awareness of the reality of death is a key element of his gradual growth from childhood into adulthood. Here, when he looks in the family Bible and sees the dates of his siblings’ deaths all together, he finally grasps the full weight of the tragedy. This moment coincides with the death of Tom, which forces both Jethro and Jenny to face the truth that their loved ones can be taken away by the war just as easily as anyone else.

“In other years the little house had buzzed with the teasing and squabbling and hilarity of a crowd of young people. There had been dances and cornhuskings and candymakings throughout the neighborhood; there had been afternoons of horseshoe pitching and evenings of charades [...] Now the cabin had the look of a lonely old man brooding in the summer sunlight. Beyond the chatter of Nancy’s little boys, there was no lightness within the cabin or anywhere nearby.”

The Creightons’ family home and surrounding land change throughout the story to reflect the emotional state of the family and the country as a whole. Before the war, the house was a place of joy and laughter and unity within the community. The memory suggests youthfulness and energy. Now, personified as a “lonely old man brooding,” it has taken on a sorrowful, weary look, and the crowds of people who once filled it are no longer there. The juxtaposition of these two images highlights how dramatically both the family and the nation have changed since the war began.

“He would have to grow older and learn from history that the battle had been one of great importance for the Union, that the Confederate attempt to regain western Tennessee had failed and was therefore a bitter blow to the government of Jefferson Davis. But in 1862, Jethro hated to think of Shiloh, not only because of Tom, but because it seemed to him to have been an empty victory.”

A major theme of Across Five Aprils is The Personal Impact of War, and this quote exemplifies that theme perhaps better than any other quote. Studying a from the distant, emotionless perspective of a newspaper or a history textbook cannot capture the real human experience of living through such a time. For Jethro, he cannot appreciate the cold strategic value of the Battle of Shiloh, because this battle will always be the one that took his brother from him. Because of how that loss colors his perception, he can only see the victory as an empty one.

“Jethro felt his face burn with anger, but something new had been pointed up to him, something in the long process of learning to which he would be sensitive for the rest of his days. Until then he had not thought of his speech as being subject to ridicule.”

The Southern diction used in the characters’ dialogue throughout the book is a device Irene Hunt uses to highlight that even though the Creightons belong to the Union side, they have close ties to the South too. Jethro is never personally confronted with this fact until the Federal Registrars mock him for his accent. This quote furthers Jethro’s characterization as observant, self-aware and attuned to the people around him; he is constantly in the process of learning and shaping his views of the world.

“Desertin’ ain’t a purty word to you, is it? Well, I done it—I don’t jest know why. We’d had another skirmish and there was dead boys that we had to bury the next day—and we’d bin licked ain. All at oncet I knowed I couldn’t stand it no longer, and I jest up and left. Oncet a man has left, he’s done fer. I’ve bin a long time gittin’ home, and now that I’m here, it ain’t no comfort.”

The theme of Resilience and Growth in the face of hardship is prominent throughout the novel, but Eb’s experience illustrates that there are limits to how much someone can endure. It also offers a sympathetic view of the deserters through the example of Eb and highlights the cruelty of a system that punishes transgressors without consideration of their humanity.

“Of course, right now I could say to Pa ‘I leave it up to you’—and then what would he do? Why, he’d be caught in the same trap I’m in now; I’d wriggle out of it and leave the decidin’ to a sick old man; I’d put him in the spot where any way he decided would be bad—hurtful to a man’s conscience. No, there ain’t an answer that’s any plainer to an old man than it is to me.”

In this quote, Jethro speaks his thoughts as he tries to decide what to do about Eb’s predicament. This is a significant moment that shows how much Jethro has matured since the beginning of the book. As a child, he would have considered his father the final authority, but now he understands that the adults are also struggling to figure out what’s right.

“But Mr. Lincoln was a man who looked at problems from all sides […] Mr. Lincoln had plowed fields in Illinois; he had thought of the problems men came up against; he was not ready to say, ‘Everything on this side of the line is right, and everything on the other side is wrong.’”

The image of Lincoln plowing fields encapsulates Jethro’s sense that Lincoln is both wise and down-to-earth. Jethro has grown more mature by taking on the responsibilities of the farm, learning to endure in the face of bad weather and disaster, and so knowing that Lincoln has been through the same experiences inclines Jethro to sympathize with and respect him. This quote is another that contrasts with Jethro’s characterization at the beginning of the novel, highlighting how much he has changed and grown.

“You must tell yourself sternly, Jenny, that your love for me is no more sacred than the loves for which thousands upon thousands of women are weeping today. I think it wrong that I write to you with hope and optimism for our future; I think I must prepare you for the possibility—no, the probability—of heartbreak. When a man has looked upon such massive waste of life as I have witnessed in these three battles, the presumption to consider his own little personal dreams becomes a matter of supreme egotism.”

This quote comes from Shad’s letter to Jenny, shortly before he is injured at the Battle of Gettysburg. Throughout the story, Shad participates in some of the deadliest battles of the Civil War but manages to survive each one. He realizes that this is not because he is special in some way, as Tom and Eb had believed they were back when the war first began, but merely because of the whims of chance. This quote ties to the theme of The Personal Impact of War: It’s easy to read about the high death tolls in many of these battles and not think about the true significance of them, but Shad’s experience reminds the Creightons that every soldier who died had dreams and loved ones just as he does.

“‘Don’t expect peace to be a perfect pearl, Jeth,’ Ross Milton had warned. ‘This is a land lying in destruction, physical and spiritual. If the twisted railroads and the burned cities and the fields covered with the bones of dead men—if that were all, we could soon rise out of the destruction. But the hate that burns in old scars, and the thirst for revenge that has distorted men until they should be in straitjackets rather than in high office—these are the things that may make peace a sorry thing.’”

The final pages of Across Five Aprils are a mix of hope and dread for the future of the nation. While people around them are celebrating the end of the war, Ross Milton reminds Jethro that peace will not be without its own struggles. He predicts that while the land itself may recover from the destruction, the people will still carry emotional scars for years to come.

“My hope lies in Abraham Lincoln. He has four years before him and the power of a mighty office; if he can control the bigots, if he can allow the defeated their dignity and a chance to rise out of their despair—if he can do this, then maybe peace will not be a mockery.”

Milton’s optimism about Lincoln’s post-war presidential term reads as darkly ironic for any reader who knows that Lincoln will soon be assassinated. This quote also works to make the future seem ominously uncertain. Milton’s hope for the nation’s healing rests on Lincoln, but since Lincoln will soon be gone, what does that mean for the nation? Milton’s statement indicates how things might have gone differently had Lincoln survived.

“Because, Jeth, after the thirteenth amendment has become a part of our Constitution and for years afterward—twenty-five, maybe fifty—there will be men and women with dark faces who will walk the length and width of this land in search of the bright promise the thirteenth amendment holds out to them.”

Despite slavery being at the very heart of the conflict between the North and South, the presence of Black people in America is absent from most of the narrative. Slavery is brought up in conversations with Wilse Graham and Bill near the beginning, but often, it is almost dismissed as irrelevant. Here, though, Ross Milton tells Jethro that though the slaves may be free now, Black people in America will still struggle for a long time to achieve the equality promised to them in the Constitution.