Soldiers Heart: Being the Story of the Enlistment and Due Service of the Boy Charley Goddard in the First Minnesota Volunteers

The novel’s exposition stems from Paulsen’s choice to depict the Civil War with a high degree of historical accuracy. The novel’s main character Charley is based on a soldier named Charley Goddard who enlisted in the army at age fifteen. Charley’s unit, the First Minnesota Volunteers, was also an actual unit. Paulsen foregrounds historical details from the Civil War including facts about the muskets that Charley learned to use. For example, he shows that they were not particularly accurate and took several steps to reload between shots. Paulsen also describes the endless drills Charley is made to perform, which later become crucial to Charley’s automatic responses on the battlefield.

Paulsen shows that for some of the Union soldiers like Charley the war was more about fighting the secessionists than about ending slavery. Paulsen uses the emotional moment between Charley and the enslaved woman to show Charley’s lack of awareness about slavery. As a Northerner, Charley has never seen an enslaved person before; he does not understand why the woman is crying as she thanks him for going to war. Paulsen shows that for at least some Northerners, the Civil war started less as an ideological conflict between abolitionists and slavery advocates than a political one between those who wanted to keep the Union intact and secessionists.

There is a stark contrast between Charley’s expectation of the war and the reality of battle. Paulsen establishes Charley’s expectations in the first three chapters. The war starts as a seemingly exciting event. The newspapers and everyone in Charley’s hometown expect the war to be over quickly and an easy win. They send soldiers off with great fanfare, and Charley can’t imagine missing out on what he sees as an adventure. Many people believe the war will not be particularly dangerous or last long. These expectations will later contrast sharply with Charley’s battle experiences.

Charley’s training and travels as a soldier expand his worldview for the first time. When his unit is finally summoned after weeks of drilling and waiting, Charley experiences the glory of being a soldier: good food, comfortable seats on a train, parades, girls cheering, and the scenery of the countryside. He has never left his hometown before and seeing new parts of the United States is formative. However, the novel eventually shows how the war both exposed Charley to the world while also leading to his isolation from society as a result of his battlefield traumas.

Paulsen also introduces and develops Charley’s character in these chapters. Although Charley is young, he wants to prove himself as a man. His father died, which perhaps accounts for Charley’s desire to become a man despite his youth. He thinks that volunteering as a soldier will make him a man and uses his ability to speak quickly to convince his mother to let him go. Paulsen creates a contrast between Charley and his fellow soldiers in more than just their ages. Charley chooses to refrain from using profanity, even though the other men swear often. He is God-fearing and wants to keep a clear conscience before God. Paulsen uses a battle metaphor to demonstrate Charley’s thought process. Just as a surgeon explained to the men that clean clothes would prevent infection if they are wounded in battle, so Charley believes that righteous living will prevent guilt before God if he dies in battle. He chooses to speak and act uprightly to keep his soul from becoming infected. This shows that despite people’s expectations that the Union will quickly defeat the Confederacy, Charley understands the possibility that he could be wounded or could die in battle.