Analysis Of "Rifles For Waitie" By Harold Keith

Analysis Of "Rifles For Waitie" By Harold Keith

Analysis of Rifles for Watie
For my final project, I chose the historical young adult Civil War novel Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith, which was published in 1957 and was the winner of the Newberry Medal the following year. It's the story of Jefferson “Jeff” Bussey, a sixteen year-old boy from Kansas who becomes an infantry soldier during the Civil War to help defend the Union against Colonel Watie, leader of the Cherokee Indian rebels. When he is sent to go to the enemy camp to serve as a spy, he finds that, over time, his loyalty becomes tested as he realizes just how much he has in common with those on “the other side“-should he betray the enemy, or join them? I won’t reveal how Rifles for Watie ends, in case you decide to read it for yourself.
Mr. Keith, the author, is from Oklahoma and grew up near the Cherokee country he describes in the novel. While traveling in eastern Oklahoma   doing research on his master’s thesis in history, he uncovers startling new information on the Civil War that gets him interested in maybe writing a historical novel on it someday, based on his discoveries and observations. He ended up interviewing over twenty Civil War veterans then living in Oklahoma and Arkansas, and much of the info in Rifles for Watie, which took five years for him to write, comes from his conversations with them, which he took notes of.
For the most part, the accuracy of the Civil War details in Rifles for Watie, compared to what is mentioned about the war in the text, is very accurate, probably because Mr. Keith was able to interview surviving veterans directly, and not only did he do that, but he also visited the actual sites depicted in the book, resulting in in an authenticity that is rare for young adult historical fiction. The things that Jeff went through as an infantry soldier-the constant exhaustion, never having enough to eat, marching for miles and miles all day long, watching those he befriended die in battle, etc., were so common for a...