The Year Of The Hangman Sparknotes

Throughout his novel, Gary Blackwood poses the question: What if we lost the American Revolution? In the novel, The Year of the Hangman, our main character, Creighton Brown, lives a spoiled life in England, after his father, Harry Brown, had died in the American uprising. Then, after another night of gambling he was kidnapped and shipped off to the Americas to live with his uncle, by order of his mother. As he was traveling to Louisiana with his uncle, his ship gets raided by American pirates, who take his uncle hostage and send him to work for the infamous Dr. Franklin, after he lied to him about his connection to his uncle. Creighton then faces his conscience as the line between right and wrong, good and evil, American or England, gets thinner

and thinner. Throughout the novel, the author, Gary Blackwood, manipulates the major events of the American Revolution, by rewriting history that America never came to be, thus creating tension.
Through the story, the author writes of suspenseful, gripping events, all brought to pass by the changing of the great historical event, The American Revolution.

For instance, in the beginning of the novel, Creighton and his uncle are heading for Florida, as his uncle has just been transferred by the British army. On their journey, they come across what they thought to be a merchant ship, “’ Can you make out her colors?’ thee colonel asked. ‘She’s flying the Union Jack,’ the captain said.”(Blackwood 45), “‘It’s a ruse, gentlemen! Prepare to-’His command was cut off by an enormous roar, like a pearl of thunder, but ten times louder. In the same instance there came a sickening splintering sound, and suddenly the air was filled with flying bits of wood and metal.” (Blackwood 47). The privateer that attacked them was part of the American Navy. If our author, Gary Blackwood, did not choose to change history in the way that he did, there would have been no suspense to this encounter, or many other further on in the

novel.
Further on in the novel, Blackwood continues to create tension through Creighton’s experiences in the Americas. For example, He goes to loge with the infamous Dr. Benjamin Franklin, and experiences a life changing way of thinking, that changes his point of view on which side of the truth he stands. As Creighton is pondering this he thinks, “He had always believed, growing up, that countries-or at least his country-waged war to an unwritten code of honor... Now he realized how it really worked: When two opponents…met and clashed, then rules and ideals and honor were left behind, along with homes and families.” (Blackwood 225) This excerpt shows his changing way of view between what is moral and immoral. This internal conflict gives the reader a vigorous analysis on the character development throughout Creighton’s journey.
Subsequently to his ponderings of the right and wrong, he had journeyed to a British fort, St.

Marks, where he had hoped to find the great General Washington. He instead found not the genera, but a former friend of his he long thought dead, “‘What’s your name? Can you tell me your name?’ The reply was so feeble that Creighton could scarcely hear, but he could have sworn that the man said, ‘Brown. Harry Brown.’” (Blackwood 233) At this point of the novel Creighton is overwhelmed by the prospect that his father was not in fact dead, but very much living. He had come to know that what he had taken as a heavy loss, a heart breaking, life changing moment, had all been erased in an

instance.
Gary Blackwood, has developed a integrate theme of trepidation as he progresses with Creighton’s story line. Creighton undergoes a series of intense and suspenseful series of events throughout the course of the novel. However these events could not have been made possible if not through his manipulation of time, in the sense that he rewrote history. Blackwood did in fact create a level of tension in the novel through this interaction with time.