War Brothers

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2008

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Chapters 16-20

Chapters 21-25

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Religion

Religion and its various forms is an important motif in War Brothers. Every major character is religious in some way. However, different characters have different religious backgrounds, with some embracing the syncretic combination of traditional Ugandan religion with Christianity, and some embracing Catholicism wholesale. Oteka attends a Catholic church, yet also visits with medicine men and believes in the existence of both traditional magic and Christianity, whereas Jacob and Tony are more purely Catholic.

The Lord’s Resistance Army, on the other hand, represents a sort of twisted mockery of those religious feelings. The Lord’s Resistance Army fights for a theocratic and authoritarian version of Christianity, which involves magic, rituals, and ideas from other belief systems. Unlike the religion of the teenagers, this version of religious thought is explicitly shown to form a system of control, used to brainwash and control the actions of the kidnapped children. After their experiences, some of the teenagers become notably less religious, with Hannah deciding against being a nun and Jacob struggling to find any higher meaning in what happened to him as a child soldier. However, Oteka presents an alternative view, reassuring Jacob that they can transcend their experiences by exercising their God-given right to choose a path of humanity and nonviolence.

Mangos

Mangos appear frequently in War Brothers, often as a symbol of peace and resistance. In the first chapter, Jacob’s father sits under a mango tree with Musa Henry Torac while they discuss Kony; Jacob also encounters mango trees around the streets of Gulu and at the seminary before the kidnapping. In this context, mango trees symbolize peaceful places that later remind Jacob of home.

When the children escape the encampment, it’s revealed that Hannah brought along four mangos with her for the group to eat. After their months of trekking and hunger, Jacob decides that “[h]e had eaten mangos all his life but this was the first time he had really tasted one” (197). Despite the warm and loving associations with mango trees, Jacob is only ever really able to taste a mango after his traumatic experiences, since he’d never before been forced to appreciate the fruit in the same way. Similarly, Jacob’s freedom and peace once he escapes from the Lord’s Resistance Army is sweeter by comparison after his time in enslavement, just as the mango is sweeter because of his hunger.

Mangos are also present in the final moment of the novel, as the last two sentences state, “Jacob and Hannah walked into the garden toward the great mango tree. It was a sweet—sweeter life” (263). In the final moments of War Brothers, Jacob can access a place of peace and security, just as the mango tree was for him at the beginning of the novel. Hannah’s inclusion in this moment demonstrates the extent to which their friendship has deepened into a potentially romantic connection.

Wild Animals

A constant danger associated with escaping—besides the threats from Lizard and the other soldiers—is the dangerous wild animals in between the captives and freedom, with animals forming an important symbol in the novel.

When Jacob and Oteka first meet in Gulu, the priest tells them the story of the scorpion and the crocodile, in which a crocodile decides to give a scorpion a lift across a lake, despite the risk to the both of them if the scorpion stings him, which is exactly what happens. This story serves as an analogy to the experiences of the captives, who resemble the crocodiles, supporting the soldiers on their backs as if they’re scorpions, implying that the soldier’s selfish and violent actions will be the downfall of them all.

The wild animals in War Brothers—from the crocodiles and hippopotamuses in the river to the peaceful gorilla on the bank—represent danger to the children. While the boys are afraid of the gorilla on the bank, Hannah decides to speak to it politely: “‘Icoo maber?’ […] She even bowed her head a little. ‘Kop ango?’” (231). In Acholi, these phrases are greetings, meaning the equivalent of “good afternoon” and “what’s up” in English respectively. Following Hannah’s respectful posture toward the gorilla, the others are able to pass by safely. However, unlike Lizard, who is killed by a lion, none of the other teenagers are hurt by wild animals, due to the respect with which they treat them. Lizard, on the other hand, has had to become violent and predatory to survive in the Lord’s Resistance Army, and his death by a lion shows the limits of that sort of self-preservation strategy.