Despite being one of the most modern countries, the history of the United States, from that 1776 of its independence and federal establishment, the great North American country has marked a preponderant role in the future of the world.
But the federal aspect and its establishment toward self-determination also carried its own contradictions. The prolonged Indian Wars between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries implied a colonizing will of the eastern Americans, a whole paradox that contravened their liberating proclamation against European colonizers. Then came the civil war or the Civil War, in which North and South also had them stiff in order to keep the great self-proclaimed State together.
And in those is where sebastian barry places us throughout this novel. With the first half of the XNUMXth century defeated, the colonizing spirit, which the Americans already considered their own lands, still lasted. While the latent conflict between north and south acquired warlike overtones.
And there we meet Thomas McNulty and John Cole, young, already wrestling with the Indians, and eager to restore general order in the vast domains of the Union. As soldiers that they are, both Thomas and John will know of the violence on the front lines, the sensation and even the smell of death. And yet they are still young, with a spirit still ready for amendment provided the right environment is found.
The will of two young men only men can always be assumed as a possible induced behavior. But if there is the possibility that life and love can break through, no other moral indoctrination can defeat the ultimate ideal of peace and survival.
Together with Thomas and John we travel through emblematic spaces of the interior of the United States, the wild west of diffuse borders and ancestral domains, the notion of freedom and the relearning of humanity in communion with the environment, the need to forget and the inalienable possibility of second Chances…
You can now buy the novel Days without end, the new book by Sebastian Barry, with a discount for accesses from this blog, here: