Gods and Generals

From Free net encyclopedia

For the video game, see Gods and Generals (video game)

Image:Robert Duvall as Robert E. Lee in Gods and Generals.png

1 Novel
2 Film
- 2.1 Criticism
- 2.2 Cast
3 Quotes
4 Notes
5 External links

Novel

Gods and Generals is the prequel to Michael Shaara's 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels (filmed as Gettysburg). Written by Jeffrey Shaara after his father Michael's death in 1988, the novel relates events from 1858 through the start of the American Civil War, ending just as the two armies march toward Gettysburg.

Following his father's style of focusing on the most important officers of the two armies (General Robert E. Lee, General Winfield Scott Hancock, General Stonewall Jackson, and Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Chamberlain) Shaara wrote a war epic, detailing troop movements and strategies, combat situations, and the emotional turmoil of soldiers fighting old friends. General Hancock, for instance, spends much of the novel dreading the day he will have to fire on his friend in the Confederate Army, "Lo" Armistead. The novel also deals with General Lee's disillusionment with the Confederate bureaucracy and General Jackson's religious fervor.

[edit]

Film

Gods and Generals is also a movie based on the novel, released on Friday, February 21, 2003, starring Jeff Daniels as Chamberlain and Robert Duvall as Lee.

The film was directed by Ronald F. Maxwell, who had previously adapted Gettysburg in 1993. After the box office failure of Gettysburg, Maxwell was unable to get the prequel greenlit until media mogul Ted Turner provided the entire $60 million budget.

[edit]

Criticism

The film was a critical and box office failure. It was criticized for its slow pace and awkward screenwriting; in particular, critics disliked the way the characters tend to deliver highly rhetorical speeches at each other instead of speaking conversationally.Template:Ref

Civil War historians and aficionados also criticized the film's radical departures from the novel, a significant change from the film Gettysburg, which remained exceptionally true to its novel. These differences include the omission of Winfield Hancock as a major character; the deletion of Stonewall Jackson's less savory characteristics and eccentricities; the introduction of scenes and characters not in the original novel (primarily during the battle and destruction of Fredericksburg); and the complete expulsion of the actions of Darius Couch, John Reynolds, and George Meade, which led to the successful preservation of the Army of the Potomac after the defeat at Chancellorsville.

In addition, the first third of the book that deals primarily with the events leading up to the Civil War and gave important background information of the characters was also entirely deleted, particularly the unrest in Southern California, which was put down peaceably by Hancock and Armistead; John Brown's seizure of Harpers Ferry and the recapture of the arsenal by marines led by Lee and Stuart; the final farewell in California between Hancock and Armistead discussed in Gettysburg; Texas Governor Sam Houston's refusal to support secession; Lee's contempt for David E. Twiggs's surrender of the Department of Texas to the rebels as well as Lee's refusal of Winfield Scott's offer to command the federal forces organized to put down the rebellion. Similarly, the film was also criticized for skirting the issue of slavery by having several Southern generals give what many critics consider ahistorical anti-slavery speeches. Template:Ref. Particularly highlighted in this regard is one series of utterances by Stonewall Jackson (Stephen Lang) that sounds more like Martin Luther King Jr. than what many would expect from a Confederate corps commander. It should be remembered, with this criticism in mind, that it is a historically verified fact that Jackson broke Virginia laws forbidding the education of negroes by teaching black children to read and write through a class he held every sunday, acting in his capacity as a Deacon of Lexington's Presbyterian Church.

[edit]