Bang the Drum Slowly

Bang The Drum Slowly

Bang the Drum Slowly is a fiction novel by Mark Harris published in 1956. It was a sequel to The Southpaw in 1953 and then made into a 1956 U.S. Steel Hour television adaption and later a film adaption in 1973. There are 3 major themes in this book. The first one is time is passing. Henry, who is finally coping with Bruce's illness, learns that time is fleeting, and there is no time to go back in the past. Henry recognizes it is important to appreciate all the people around him because he will never know when they could be gone. With that being said, Henry says, "'Well, I been a heel all week but I will be better to him beginning Monday because Monday might never come" (Harris 152). Henry starts to realize he needs to start being nice to the people that he loves and he also stops teasing his friends and starting arguments with strangers. Theodore Roosevelt claimed " in any republic, courage is a prime necessity for the average citizen if he is to be a good citizen; and he needs physical courage no less than moral courage. Athletics are good, especially in their rougher form, because they tend to develop such courage"(Gems 77). One thing I really think that implies today that Henry says, "Life is too short to fill it up with ugly words". Today there is so much hatred. As Henry writes his book, he wishes he could of spent more time playing with his daughter when she was a baby. The next year he had set time to spend with her. The second major theme is coping with death. The reality of death sets in when he finds out that Bruce will die young. Death can be a very scary thing. When he finds out about Bruce, he accepts the fact that everyone will die including him. Henry says it best in this quote, "Dying old is in the cards, and you figure on it, and it happens to everybody, and you are willing to swallow it" (Harris 86). When Bruce got this disappointing news, he seemed in good spirits and takes the opportunity to recall all the great times he had throughout his life. Bruce is happy about what he accomplished in his life but knows that there is no way getting out of this. In Bruce's final days, the other players had several celebrations for him. Henry kept saying, "He stood a chance of living a long time yet, not too long but long enough, and I tried to keep him thinking of things yet ahead" (Harris 45). This whole book is about dealing with death because the title, "Bang the Drum Slowly" is a line from a song that is usually played at funerals. The third major theme is friendship. In the beginning, Henry thinks Bruce is stupid, annoying and hard to live with. He thinks that of Bruce because hey have been old acquaintances and roommates and have had a lot of years of close friendship. Henry is about to say goodbye to Bruce but as that happens he realizes that Bruce's faults do not aggravate him anymore.