The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail

The drum motif illuminates two of the play’s themes: Conscience Over Country and Freedom and Liberty for All. It is first introduced in the play’s epigraph, in a quotation from Henry David Thoreau that states: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured, or far away” (1). Metaphorically, the “music” Thoreau speaks of represents a person’s ideals or dreams, or the principles and scruples that guide their choices. He believes that every individual must be free to follow their own drummer and not be expected to match their steps—or choices—to either others’ choices or an authority figure’s dictates.

The drum motif resurfaces in Henry’s war dream, in which Edward Emerson appears as a drummer boy, playing a “snare drum [that] snarls a military cadence” (92). Ball, dressed as a general, chants “Learn to kill!” in time with Edward’s drumbeat (93). The drumming “build[s] snappishly” as soldiers march to its rhythm and follow Ball’s orders to shoot; however, Henry does not obey. The military drumbeat is associated with Ball, who demands conformity and obedience. Edward’s death in the dream highlights the result of teaching children to obey and conform; they never experience real freedom and die serving a society in which they are mere “subordinates.”

At the play’s end, Henry strides from the theater, listening to “an eccentric, non-military drummer” as the sound grows in volume (101). It is “his own different drummer” (101). He has performed his duty to his conscience by refusing to contribute to the war, and so he has preserved his freedom. Even as actors take their bows and patrons leave the theater, the “distinctive and irregular” cadence continues, as if to signify the continued relevance of Henry’s ideas and the choice presented to each person to follow their own drum or to “go along” with someone else’s and relinquish their liberty (101).