The thesis of this paper is going to be a summary of Malcolm and his development through out the book.
When Malcolm first joins the army, he is an eager boy who wants to help fight the war. But while he is still training, or waiting for combat, he gathers from old soldier anecdotes that to be a good soldier, you must be cool. What that means is that you have to be extremely calm and not let your emotions get the better of you in combat.
When he tries to do this in his first battle, he is quite disappointed with his performance, even though the old soldiers are raining praises upon praises on him. In his next battle though, he does way better.
What he does is try to rescue two men, with the help of some fellow soldiers, even though the enemy is spitting lead at them from all directions.
In this battle, he proves that he is a capable soldier, instead of an over eager boy who wants to help protect his country, already and improvement.
He proves his intellect in another story. When he is captured by the enemy, he escapes from them, only to get into the clutches of some bandits. These bandits let him live because they really need a cook, since theirs is grumbling and making the meal harder and tougher by the day.
Malcolm is led to an abandoned castle, where he makes his living by making them meals. He does this for some time before they bring in a herd of cattle. His plan of escape could now finally come true. After butchering the cows, he takes their skin and cuts them into pieces about 2 in. wide. He ties these pieces together, and makes it into a rope. He flings it through a window, and climbs down, managing to escape the marauders and heading towards a village that he heard the bandits discussing about.
There are two reasons to this. 1) Is because he more or less knew its location, and 2) Because it was about to be looted
When he finally arrives, he helps the towns people to protect their village from the bandits by giving them a plan. The plan was to knock down some trees to fence them off, and them kill them.
This shows that he is a skilled thinker, and can plan ahead and get out of any sticky situation, which is another, probably better improvement and upgrade.
He proves that he is a very good leader and improviser when he and some of the men he had rescued from peasants, are trapped. The people they are facing are a group of peasants who are looking for them. The battle takes place in a church tower.
They block off the doors, and when the peasants can’t get through it, they get a battering ram made out of a tree. Malcolm tells the men to go and grab the stones that they have piled onto the roof, and topple them down onto the peasants, killing them.
When they cut down a larger tree to use as a battering ram, he tells them to break up the stones, since they are pretty much crumbling due to the water and ice, and then they hurl them towards the peasants.
The peasants do eventually break through, and Malcolm and the men fight back with all the vigor and energy they can muster.
He strategically positions them so that the enemy won’t see them when they try to attack them. Where was he and his men located? At the top of a spiral staircase.
When all hope is almost lost, he sends off a man to go and catch up to the army and tell them what happened. The news does reach the army, and the cavalry swoops in and rescues them just in time killing and slaughtering the peasants as they tried to run.
See? Malcolm makes a great leader, awesome soldier, and quite a thinker. To bad he decided to go and join the army. He might have made a lot of technological break-throughs with his intellect.
The Blogger 
Leave a comment