Divided We Fall Analysis

In the book ‘Divided We Fall’ the author’s overall message, in my opinion, is perseverance and no matter how difficult the situation, never give up and always try to complete the task at hand. The main character is put in a very difficult situation where everyone is against him and some people even try to harm him, but through all the situations he was put through he persevered through all of them. There could also be a political message to people in this book, but I think the message is to persevere.
The main character, Daniel Wright, was a high schooler who enlisted in the Idaho Army National Guard. He had a great life. He had a girlfriend, great friends, a truck he loved, and he loved playing football. Everything was going great until the night he got called into The National Guard for an emergency. There was a riot going on outside of the state capital at Boise in Idaho. Once he was called in he and his unit got to the capital. His unit tried to get the people to leave but they would not disperse. His unit then put on gas masks and threw tear gas at the people. Some people left, but others stayed and still were protesting and rioting. Then, someone threw a rock at Daniel and hit him in the head and his gun

went off. After that, a ton a people started shooting. Some civilians were killed and people around the nation were outraged and wanted the people in the national guard arrested. The governor told the soldiers not to tell anyone about this and that he would try to keep their identities a secret.
It took Daniel awhile to get over what happened in Boise.

His girlfriend kept talking about the Boise incident and how she wanted the people arrested. It was really hard for him not to say anything to anyone. He never kept secrets from his friends and had to try to assimilate to the new change. Finally, he ended up telling his friends what happened, after he couldn’t keep the secret from them anymore. Then the president leaked his name to the public and this changed how Daniel had to live. There was a guy who tried to kill him once, news reporters following him around and staying outside his house all the time. Daniel then had to assimilate to this new way of living life. It was difficult to live this new way of live but he dealt with it and kept

going.
Although Daniel was faced with many challenges throughout this novel, he never gave up and was the kind of person who persevered no matter what the situation was. He had to assimilate to a new way of living after experiencing a major event that changed his life forever.