Reoccurs In Elisa Carbone's Blood On The River

In Elisa Carbone’s Blood on the River the theme of survival reoccurs in several scenarios. Samuel Collier, a young teen boy, has lived most of his early years depending on himself. However, in the New World he is forced to learn how to survive by working as a team with others instead of fighting for himself.
Samuel grew up striving to survive with his Mom in a tumble-down house. After his mother died Samuel lived in the poorhouse; however, when he was caught trying to steal his mother’s locket from a pawnshop he was arrested. Instead of getting hung, the magistrate dragged Samuel down to an orphanage run by Reverend Hunt. Samuel’s main lesson he learns on the street is that to survive you must never trust anyone, therefore, in the orphanage he never made friends. For example, he fought to settle arguments and defend himself from name calling: “I knew only one way to settle the argument: with my fist” (7). One day he and two other boys in the orphanage, Richard and James, are picked as pages for several men aboard ships bound for the New World. The goal

of the expedition is to create a colony and find gold for the Virginia Shipping Company.
Samuel learns his first lessons on survival by learning a to depend on others, after he gets into a fight with Richard; John Smith proves a point about needing to work with other people to stand or survive, as punishment Smith chains him up for the night. In the morning when Sam needs a bucket he is forced to ask Richard this humbled Samuel, and even though he did not understand how to work with others immediately he had a faint idea.
Samuel first experiences Indian arrows during a night attack on Jamestown. John Smith had previously warned the gentlemen that the Indians were scouting the defenses, but they did not believe him. Instead, they listened to Wingfield and his ideas of not seeming threatening by not defending their fort. Samuel survives the attack because he hides under a mattress; James dies because he ran to the ships hoping to make it safely and take refuge far enough away. This causes Samuel to understand another lesson about survival to protect each other. He thought of the way that he had rudely treated James and the what if made him very regretful.
After living in the New World for a little while Captain Smith begins to teach him the Algonquian language and later how to care for and use a sword.

Smith tells Samuel that the language of the Indians will be needed desperately: “This language will be your protection outside the fort, and within as well” (90). He learns that the gentleman are complainers when they don’t get the food they want and don’t want to work.
Smith leaves Samuel in the care of an Indian village. While he lives with them the Indians teach him how to fish, make snares for many kinds of animals, build a fire, and what wild food is good to eat. (185) After the winter, he is fetched by some men from Jamestown and they do not recognize him at first because he looks like one of the natives. They return to Jamestown and Samuel readjusts to the scant food; he helps translate the Indian language and bargain for food allowing the settlers to

survive.
After Smith returns to England Samuel is a freed man. He understands why Smith takes Richard with him: “Truly, only the strongest and toughest will survive what is coming” (197). He expects that the Indians will attack Jamestown because Smith the peacemaker is gone or the colony will starve. Meanwhile, he enjoys living as an apprentice to John Leyden, Samuel plans to live at Point Comfort instead of Jamestown over the winter. Accordingly, he assumes that the whole Leyden family John, Anne, and baby Virginia would be going to Point Comfort; instead, he learns that Anne does not want to move. He quickly steals baby Virginia and leaves for Point Comfort. Consequently, the young parents quickly follow enraged. They change their minds about staying and later find that Indians did attack and most starved to death.
Undoubtedly, the theme of survival is evident throughout the book with Samuel, the settlers, John Smith’s negotiations with the Indians, and Point Comfort.