Autobiography, "Ordinary Courage"

The portrait of the war and the birth of the nation painted by Martin is a realistic, down-to-earth portrait. Martin clearly wants to do away with any romantic or idealistic notions about the war or the founding of the nation. He wants to show how it was for an average soldier to fight in that particular war, and he is successful in doing so. He wants to strip away any illusions that the reader might have of the nature of war. He writes that he does not want to paint himself as anything like a hero, for he does not see himself as a hero. He sees the war as a terrible experience with suffering and not heroism as the main feature.

Martin clearly believes in the principles and ideals for which the war was fought---freedom, democracy, etc. On the other hand, he is determined to show that the war which was fought to bring those ideals to reality was a dirty and bloody war. He is not a "flag-waver" who blindly glorifies every effort made in the name of those ideals. He ma

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gular army was often taken for granted. Another successful element of this chronological organization is the portrait of the development of the author's sense of humor. Again, he begins the book and the war as a boy who takes life innocently and naively, but he ends as a maturing young man who has learned and suffered too much to believe what he is told by others. His humor has grown along with his philosophy of life. This sense of humor allows him to tell the reader harsh truths about the Revolutionary War which the reader might not be so willing to hear without the music of that sense of humor as a backdrop. This is not to say that the book is an unqualified success. To the contrary, despite the fact that the author uses the chronological approach to portray the war and his own individual development, the book has serious shortcomings. There is no doubt that the book tells an important story about the experiences of the average soldiers in the revolutionary army. This is especially important from an historical perspective because it lets us know what the "non-hero" experienced in the war. We know as much as we want to know about George Washington and the other famous heroes of the struggle with Great Britain, so Martin's ef
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Approximate Word count = 1695
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)