62 pages • 2 hours read
AviThe Fighting Ground
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1984A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Part 1, Pages 3-53Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “April 3, 1778”
Pages 3-19 Summary
“9:58.” Young Jonathan dreams of joining the American Revolution as a soldier like his father, older brother, and cousin. His father was wounded in battle the previous year and won’t let Jonathan join the fight. As father and son work their cornfield, the tavern bell sounds an alarm. Jonathan touches his father’s rifle; his father, eyes fearful, warns his son against leaving to join up, instead encouraging him to return to the house.
“10:15.” Jonathan dashes home and asks his mother, who hates the war, if there’s any news. She’s heard none—she frets about never hearing from her elder son, who’s in Pennsylvania with General Washington’s army—and suggests Jonathan go to the tavern to find out more. He puts on his shoes and runs for the tavern.
“10:25.” As he runs past the creek and woods toward the tavern, Jonathan’s mind swells with thoughts of the glory of war: “It was spring, and warm, and wonderful ripe for war” (10). The tavern bell keeps tolling, and Jonathan decides he’ll ask at the tavern not for news but to join up.
“10:45.” Jonathan approaches the fortress-like stone tavern where, on the green outside, men gather and a boy rings the big bell. The village, in northwest New Jersey, lies about 20 miles from enemy-held towns to the south, including Trenton. Someone asks Jonathan about his father; the boy replies that his father’s leg still troubles him. Jonathan asks the boy at the bell for any news, and he says enemy soldiers are heading this way.
“11:00.” A stranger—an army corporal, big and rough-looking, with tattered clothes and muddy boots—stands in the tavern doorway. He finishes his meal and complains to the owner that time is running out for the locals to gather and defend their town. The Corporal surveys his handful of volunteers; dissatisfied, he asks Jonathan if he can handle a gun. Jonathan says yes. The Corporal says, “Get a musket from the tavern. You’re needed” (15).
“11:30.” The tavern owner brings Jonathan inside, where he finds a six-foot-long musket, old but beautiful, and hands it to the boy. He asks if Jonathan can handle its 12-pound weight; Jonathan says yes. The tavern owner tells the boy he can leave out the back door and no one will care, but Jonathan stands fast. The tavern owner makes him promise to return the weapon, then wishes him luck. Jonathan leaves, running to catch up with the volunteers, who are already marching south.
Pages 19-35 Summary
“12:05.” Jonathan lays the big gun on his shoulder, but it hurts his neck, so he holds it awkwardly across his chest; its powder horn and cartridge box hang low on straps and bounce against his legs. He falls behind. At a bridge, the Corporal calls a halt. Jonathan catches up and hears him say there will be 25 enemy soldiers, not 15. The volunteers shift uneasily, and some grumble. The Corporal suggests that, if they move quickly, they can get to the next town ahead of the enemy and fire at them from ambush. This cheers the men. Jonathan admires the Corporal.
“12:30.” As they walk uphill, Jonathan walks next to an older man, a friend of his father, who’s sweating hard and is surprised to see the boy. He asks if his father gave him permission to join up, but Jonathan doesn’t answer. The man seems to know something ominous about the coming battle but doesn’t say what it is. To avoid answering any more queries about his father, Jonathan drops back.
“12:40.” It’s hot and humid. At the top of a rise, the men stop to rest, some of them already exhausted. Jonathan’s legs are still fresh, but his arms are tired from carrying his gun. He looks around: In the distance, past rolling woodlands, stands Rocktown, where the fight will happen. In the west, heavy storm clouds brew; the air around him is still and silent. He aches to ask more questions but fears to do so.
“12:50.” Reinforcements from another town haven’t shown up yet. The men begin to worry, but the Corporal warns them that if they shy from the fight, the enemy will burn their homes. Jonathan notices the same fear on their faces that he’d seen that morning on his father’s.
“1:00.” Jonathan enjoys the walk and begins to whistle. Someone turns and looks sharply at him. He stops whistling.
“1:05.” Now in the middle of the group, Jonathan hears very little conversation; what words are spoken are few and quickly die out. The men seem grim.
“1:30.” Rocktown consists of six houses around a water well. As the men arrive, a woman is drawing water from the well. She looks at them nervously, then offers them the bucket. They drink gratefully. She asks why they are there; the Corporal tells her the enemy is coming. She grabs her skirts and runs away. The men laugh and seem to relax. One of the volunteers playfully fires his weapon into the air, and the others, especially the Corporal, glare at him for giving away their position. Once again, the men turn glum. They move out.
“2:05.” Half a mile south, the road reaches a crest. The Corporal dismounts. This is where they’ll make their stand.
Pages 35-53 Summary
“2:10.” The road winds south down the hill, then disappears into the forest. The Corporal announces that because there’s no cover nearby and their guns aren’t very accurate, they’ll simply line up in exposed ranks and fire directly at the enemy. The men argue with the Corporal, and one asks about their expected reinforcements. Just then, they hear a fife and drum; soldiers are coming.
“2:30.” The sound of the music makes the men stiffen—it’s an enemy tune. They quickly scramble to form ranks. Jonathan stands, uncertain, until someone shoves him forward, and the Corporal puts him on the front line with the shorter men. The taller ones line up behind. The process is disorganized, and the soldiers step on Jonathan’s feet. The Corporal tries to mount his nervous horse but falls, gets back up, and remounts. They begin to load their weapons.
“2:35.” Jonathan struggles with his equipment, fumbling as he tries to load the very long gun barrel with powder, paper, and ball. He sets the gun down briefly, and the ball rolls back out. Embarrassed, he puts the ball back in and uses the rod to tamp everything down inside the barrel. Then he opens the powder horn and manages to sprinkle firing grains into the priming pan. Closing the powder horn, he’s ready.
“2:40.” Jonathan looks about but finds that no one was watching him, and no one observed his inept loading technique. He looks down the road, where soldiers appear around the bend.
“2:41.” They march in rows of three, 30 men in all, dressed in splendid blue jackets over dark-yellow vests, red-and-white striped trousers, pointed yellow caps, and shiny black boots. Each carries a long flintlock gun. They’re dreaded Hessian grenadiers, German mercenary soldiers chosen for their great size and famed for their cruelty. To Jonathan, they look like giants.
“2:43.” The Hessians halt. Jonathan has a sudden urge for a drink of water, but he remains in place. The Hessians begin to march again. The Corporal orders his men to spread out. He reminds them that the front row fires first, then drops behind to reload. They wait for the signal to fire. Jonathan pulls back his hammer with a click; his gun wavers. The Hessians, still marching, spread out into three wide rows and snap bayonets onto their muskets. One of the Americans fires, then another, and the Corporal curses. Jonathan fires accidentally. The others fire. The back row moves forward, and someone shoves Jonathan aside. Acrid smoke is everywhere; Jonathan’s ears hurt; he’s disoriented. The Hessians keep marching toward them.
“2:50.” Jonathan manages to reload. A soldier huffs and falls against him, while another falls onto Jonathan’s gun. The boy manages to retrieve the weapon and look for a target. The smoke clears, and he’s standing alone before the lines of Hessians, who advance toward him, bayonets pointed at him. He turns and flees.
“3:01.” The other volunteers have disappeared. From somewhere, a volley of muskets fire. Three Hessians charge after him, and one fires. Jonathan keeps running until he’s deep in the trees, struggling to keep from dropping his weapon. Panicked, his side hurting, undergrowth clawing at him, guns firing behind him, he runs until he trips and pitches face-forward onto the ground. He’s too tired to move.
“3:05.” The sound of gunfire and fife and drum slowly fade away “until the only sounds were forest sounds” (53). Even that fades.
Part 1, Pages 3-53 Analysis
Part 1 fills some three-fourths of the book. The first portion of Part 1, about 50 pages, takes the reader on a fast-paced adventure during which young Jonathan yearns to be a soldier in the American Revolution, gets recruited, hikes to the battlefield, participates in a bloody skirmish, and escapes with his life into a nearby wood. All of this happens in a mere five hours.
Avi writes the story in the third person but entirely from Jonathan’s point of view. We see what Jonathan sees, hear what he hears, and feel what he feels. His rapid emotional transition, from eager young recruit to defeated soldier crying in shame, exhibits the shocking and unexpected calamity of actual war.
The text is divided by time stamps. This serves, in part, to stress the speed of events; it also acts as a kind of drumbeat, a cadence that keeps the story’s rhythm in motion. This echoes the drumbeat that marks the pace of marching, battle, and other events of war.
The Corporal rounds up a motley crew of volunteers, men barely trained, then lies to them about the conditions they’re about to face—he promises double the expected size of their own force, including reinforcements that never arrive, and deliberately underestimates the size of the enemy, who turn out to be highly trained Hessian grenadiers. He deliberately puts the Americans, many of them naively inexperienced like Jonathan, in the way of an overwhelming power that they’d have run from, had they known of it earlier.
It becomes clear that the Corporal knew all along about the long odds, yet he maneuvers the amateur American soldiers into an overtly dangerous situation. He must have a larger strategic purpose in mind—stall the Hessians? mislead the enemy about the strength of American resistance?—a purpose that requires risking the colonial farmers without their full understanding or consent. This, too, is an object lesson about the cruel reality of war.
The author sprinkles local historical color into the story. For example, Jonathan works around the family farm in bare feet because shoes are expensive. The great stone tavern looms dark and ominous next to a large bell on a rack from which a rope can be pulled to make the bell swing back and forth, its clapper clanging inside, part of the village’s primitive communication system. The volunteer fighters must walk several miles on a hot and humid spring day through a deep, wild forest not yet felled; that will come with later generations. A town worthy of defense contains only six houses. The Hessian troops wear three-cornered hats and the smart, colorful uniforms of the day. The fife and drum that keep the beat for marching soldiers, emblematic of American forces during the Revolution, also see use within the imported German army. The soldiers’ muskets must be loaded carefully at the muzzle end of the barrel, a process that takes about 30 seconds during a firefight and permits a fighter a mere two shots per minute. All these details serve to set the scene for the realities of 18th century warfare.
In the chaos of battle, Jonathan sees only disaster and defeat. Yet his adventure has barely begun.
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