March

In March, Geraldine Brooks exposes the deep-rooted cruelty and dehumanization of slavery. The novel follows March, the absent father from Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel Little Women, as he reflects on his past and witnesses the brutal legacy of slavery during the American Civil War. Flashbacks describe how as a young man, March stays at a Southern plantation where he teaches a bright enslaved girl named Prudence to read—an illegal act. When…

March dismantles the idea of moral purity by placing its eponymous protagonist in a series of situations that defy easy judgment. March begins the novel as an idealist who believes in abolition, education, and nonviolence. However, as the Civil War drags on and he becomes more deeply entangled in its human costs, his lofty principles begin to collide with reality. For instance, he joins the Union effort to fight slavery, only to find that the…

Throughout March, March writes home to his wife Margaret and their daughters with deliberate care, masking the brutality of war behind poetic imagery. He omits the suffering he witnesses, the moral compromises he makes, and the personal failings that haunt him. These omissions are not merely lies of convenience but rather forms of protection, meant to preserve his family’s hope. However, they also become a burden. When Margaret finally travels to Washington and sees…

In March, redemption does not arrive in a single moment of triumph but unfolds as a long, painful reckoning with guilt. Geraldine Brooks frames it as a quiet, interior process shaped more by endurance than revelation. March, weakened by war and burdened by his failures, never seeks forgiveness; he wants only to atone. He carries guilt for failing the enslaved people he tried to help, for misleading his family, and for compromising his…