Summary—Chapter 4: Chamberlain
Chamberlain raised his saber, let loose
the shout that was the greatest sound he could make, boiling the
yell up from his chest: Fix bayonets! Charge!
See Important Quotations Explained
Afternoon, south of Gettysburg. Chamberlain
and his men are finally called upon to move, just as the Confederate
attack begins. Chamberlain forms his regiment and waits for his
orders. His commanding officer, Colonel Vincent, finally begins
the march. As the men move forward, they begin to come within range
of the artillery exchange. Chamberlain orders his brother Tom to
move to the rear of the regiment, before it becomes “a hard day
for mother.” The regiment passes Big Round Top and begins to move
up onto Little Round Top. Vincent places Chamberlain’s regiment,
the Twentieth Maine, on the southeastern side of Little Round Top.
He tells Chamberlain, “You are the extreme left of the Union line.
. . . The line runs from here all the way back to Gettysburg. But
it stops here. . . . You cannot withdraw. Under any conditions.
If you go, the line is flanked. . . . You must defend this place
to the last.”
Chamberlain’s men immediately begin digging in, piling
up rocks to build a stone wall. Chamberlain orders one of his men,
Morrill, to take his company farther out to the left, in case the
Confederates try to go around the Twentieth Maine and surprise them
from the side. Chamberlain goes to the top of the hill and sees
that the Union forces in the peach orchard are being overrun and
that the Confederates will soon reach Little Round Top. He returns
to his regiment. He tells the six prisoners from the former Second
Maine that if they join the regiment now, there will be no charges.
Three of the men take him up on the offer.
The infamous “Rebel yell” is heard, and the Confederate
forces are on their way. Chamberlain finally realizes that he is
the end of the Union line and that he has been ordered never to
retreat.
The Confederates attack. The Twentieth Maine succeeds
in repelling the initial charge. Chamberlain tries to reach Morrill
to see if he and his company are all right, but a second attack
quickly follows the first. This time, Kilrain is shot, but the wound
seems slight, just under his armpit. Chamberlain jumps up on a rock
and is promptly knocked down by a shot that lands near his foot.
His foot hurts, but there is no hole in the boot. He climbs up on
another boulder to get a better view and is shot again. This time
the bullet glances off his sword scabbard.
Chamberlain calls all the commanders to him and orders
them to hold the line. He says that they are about to be flanked
on the left and that they have to stop the Confederates at all costs.
He outlines a strategic maneuver, and the commanders quickly leave
to execute his orders. Chamberlain returns to Kilrain, who is becoming
weaker from his wound.
The Twentieth is beginning to run
out of ammunition. The next attack hits hard all along the line.
Chamberlain’s men hold, but they are running very low on bullets.
The next attack knocks a hole in the line, and Chamberlain instinctively
orders the nearest man to fill it—his brother Tom. Tom survives
the attack without injury.
The Twentieth Maine is now down to 200 men,
having lost a hundred in the battle. The regiment does not have
enough ammunition to handle another attack. Therefore, Chamberlain
decides to order the men to fix their bayonets to their rifles and
charge down the hill in a motion “like a swinging door” to sweep
the Confederates away. Screaming, Chamberlain leads his men down
the hill, and the plan works amazingly well, as the beleaguered
Confederates flee in terror from the charging Union troops. As they
try to escape, they run into Morrill’s company. Many of the retreating
Confederates are soon either dead, wounded, or taken prisoner.
Chamberlain returns to Kilrain, who has been shot in
the arm again. Kilrain praises the job Chamberlain has done. Chamberlain meets
up with Colonel Rice, the new brigade commander since Vincent was
killed during the battle. Rice is very impressed with the bayonet
charge.
The regiment has suffered casualties in nearly a third
of its men. Kilrain is taken away to receive first aid, and Rice
asks Chamberlain to move his men to Big Round Top. There will be
no more fighting for them that day.
Analysis—July 2, 1863: Chapter 4
The fight on Little Round Top is one of the
most famous fights in the most famous battle of the Civil War. A
single regiment, led by a professor-turned-colonel, is ordered to
defend the extreme left flank of the Union army at all costs. They
cannot retreat—if they do, the Confederates will quickly come around
behind the Union lines and attack from the rear. The chapter’s central
position in the book highlights the importance of the fighting at
Little Round Top. The narrative also lionizes Chamberlain and his
regiment. There are only two descriptions of combat in the book
from observers actually in the midst of battle: Chamberlain at Little Round
Top and, later, Lew Armistead during Pickett’s Charge. Chamberlain’s
description is fast and action-oriented—it is likely that Shaara
conceived much of the novel around the fighting at Little Round
Top. The chapter moves at a breathless pace, culminating in the
climactic bayonet charge. The chapter can almost serve as a short
story by itself, with rising action, a climax, and falling action.
The narrator’s description of Chamberlain’s
thoughts in sentence fragments gives us a sense of the quick-paced,
confusing nature of combat: “He was knocked clean off the rock.
Dirt and leaves in his mouth. Rolling over. This is ridiculous.
Hands pulled him up.” The swift action is broken up with scenes between
Chamberlain and his men, particularly his brother Tom and Kilrain.
These scenes give the chapter a plot beyond simply a recounting
of historical details, and explain exactly what is going on between
the sentence fragments: which soldiers are killed, what angle the
Confederates attack from or are going to attack from, and how many
bullets the Union soldiers have left. The breaks also give the characters
a chance to reflect on the battle and give some meaning to it—Chamberlain’s
awareness of the fact that he cannot retreat under any circumstances
lends psychological urgency to both the plot and his character.
The fact that both Tom and Chamberlain are
fighting in the same regiment gives Shaara a way to reflect on the
effect of war on family relationships. Tom’s presence causes a great
crisis for Chamberlain during the battle. Chamberlain realizes that
the presence of a sibling “weakens a man” in combat when he hesitates
to put his brother in a dangerous strategic position. He does so,
but the action haunts Chamberlain for the rest of his life, and he
writes about the experience in his memoirs of the war. Ultimately,
Chamberlain decides to send his brother to another regiment, for
two reasons: first, he cannot depend on himself to make the right
decisions regarding Tom; and second, it is better to put distance
between the two of them so that the odds of both of them dying at
the same time are decreased.
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