Patsy Barnes Conflicts

Everyone has had some type of conflict in his or her life. Both “The Finish of Patsy Barnes” and “The Drummer Boy of Shiloh” describe important conflicts that the main characters Joby, the fourteen year old soldier and Patsy, the young African American boy are affectedly their conflicts and each must attempt to find a resolution.
Both Joby and Patsy are young boys who have internal conflicts. Patsy, after moving to Dalesford, wanted to run away back to Kentucky. However, “After a few weeks he steeled himself with the heroic resolution to make the best of what he had.” When his mom became sick with pneumonia, he knew that he had to do something for her, but the problem was that they were “very poor- too poor” to call a doctor for her.

The hurtful words by the physician telling her, and her kind to go back south, propelled Patsy to attempt to find a resolution to make his mom well again. Then and there, he decided to go to McCarthy’s Stables and get a job exercising the horses. His motivation was the need of money to get a proper doctor and medication for his sick mother. One day, a man needed a rider for his horse for a race and immediately, Patsy recognized the horse as Black Boy. He told the owner that he would ride him and the man said, “If you can ride that hoss to a winning I’ll give you more money than you ever seen before.” At that moment, Patsy agreed. “That black horse there owed to the orphan he had made.” For this was the horse that had killed Patsy’s father. During the race, the vision of his ailing mother pushed him to push the horse harder in order to win the race and Patsy won the race. He had resolved his conflict of needing money to help his sick mother and had done so in winning the race. The irony was that Black Boy had taken Patsy’s father away from him, but now he had given him back his mother. Patsy had made enough money to get the best doctor and the best medicines to help his mom to get better.
Joby was a fourteen year boy who had run away to join the army during the Civil War.

He too had an internal conflict and it was that he was a runaway. Joby had run away to fight in the war, but he had come to recognize that he had fears of the upcoming battles. Battles of the unknown, about the enemy, how he was to protect himself and keep himself from dying. Joby only had a drum for he was the drummer boy. “Me, thought the boy, I got only a drum, two sticks to beat it, and no shield.” Joby cried with fear and he had to find a resolution on how to be in this battle and survive. The general then came to Joby and commented to Joby about it being all right to cry comforted him. The general told him about how he had also cried. The general went on to tell him, that many young men had died and were going to continue to die but he could not tell that to the young soldiers, for he feared that this would cause the soldiers to give up before even starting the battle. The soldiers would defeat themselves. “Sometime this week more innocents will get shot out of pure Cherokee enthusiasm than ever got shot before. Owl Creek was full of boys splashing around in the noonday sun just a few hours ago. I fear it will be full of boys again, just floating, at sundown tomorrow, not caring where the current takes them.” This was the symbolism of the young men dying. “You on the other hand have an idea about dying in the war, but they don’t,” the general told Joby, “you are the heart of the

army.” This meant that Joby’s drum beat kept the soldiers motivated. Joby was the one who set the pace. He kept them on a long and steady pace in order not to give up, lay down and die. Joby’s found strength and bravery helped him to over come fear. This was found by the general's words of encouragement. He said that Joby was important because his pace setting of the soldiers was going to be “like ocean waves rolling in onto the sand and the soldiers would be the waves taking the charge over the enemy.”Joby was going to help the general lead his men. Joey in turn was important and will always be remembered at the “Drummer boy at Shiloh” who kept the soldiers up and moving and keeping them moving like “ocean waves.”
These two main characters were different in that each had their own conflict whether it was Patsy’s mom being ill with pneumonia or Joby having a fear of dying in the war. Yet, they were both the same in that they resolved their conflicts. It was their confidence within themselves that propelled them to search and find inner strength and bravery to push them forward to acquire their own resolution. They were both examples of how we can also persevere in an attempt to obtain resolutions to our conflicts.