59 pages • 1 hour read
Elvira WoodruffGeorge Washington's Socks
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1991A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Duty and Responsibility of a Leader
Duty and responsibility are key themes in George Washington’s Socks. Matt feels responsible throughout the story, beginning with the campout scene; when Katie announces she is ready for adventure and Matt must admit that there is no true quest planned, he feels that his club has not measured up to expectations or potential. Once the group travels in time to 1775, Matt shoulders responsibility for many conflicts: Katie’s disappearance over the edge of the boat, losing Israel’s glass beads before he could fulfill his promise, and the inability to discover a quick way back home. We see Matt’s panic at having to tell his parents that Katie is gone, as they will look to him as the person responsible for her, and he is despondent and worried when Tony insists that Matt, as leader, must figure out how to get them home.
The theme of responsibility runs beneath Matt’s interactions with the soldiers and officers of the Continental Army as well. He sees General Washington carrying a heavy burden of responsibility as his soldiers push themselves through the terrible cold and long march without proper clothing and supplies. Matt shows high regard for Colonel Henry Knox, a rebel from Boston who shouldered the responsibility of the Artillery Regiment and demonstrated a sense of duty by strategically bringing a massive arsenal of weapons 300 miles to the siege of Boston. Matt also sees an officer whose sense of duty and responsibility falters; Captain McCowly drinks while in command and disregards Matt’s concerns. He also spits disrespectfully on the ground when he cannot fully recognize Matt, a “soldier” he forcibly took under his charge earlier in the story, then forgot. Matt, in seeing how each officer manages and reacts to a sense of duty and responsibility, better learns how to serve in a leadership role and gains confidence in his actions.
Matt also learns that in war, responsibility and duty are complicated ideas. At first, Matt assumes that Israel made a patriotic sacrifice out of duty to the rebel cause; Matt learns, however, that Israel’s first responsibility is to his family. Israel must enlist to provide money and sustenance to them. In Mr. Hornbee, Matt sees that sometimes a sense of responsibility and duty can conflict within oneself; Mr. Hornbee feels responsible for Matt once he finds him on the road, but he feels equally responsible for his farm which might suffer if someone discovers Matt there.
Matt proves that he can fulfill a role of responsibility; he does not shirk from staying with the dying Israel, although it endangers him, and he has the fortitude to search for Q and Katie when the Hessians capture them. Ironically, Matt’s parents think that Matt matures in duty and responsibility at both the beginning and end of the book, when they eagerly agree that he can take Katie on the campout, then praise him for taking care of her overnight
Empathy for the “Other”
A character who fulfills the role of the “Other” often speaks a language unfamiliar to the main character or has a belief system or background that is so different from the main character that an alliance seems impossible. The “Other” character may appear as a strange, foreign curiosity to the central character.
Several groups in this story fit the role of the “Other.” When Matt first realizes his whereabouts, he fears the vague military and political enemy, the British “Redcoats.” Mr. Hornbee warily discusses his Loyalist neighbors, who believe in Britain’s claim to America. The second “other” are the hired mercenaries of German descent, the Hessians, who emerge as the story’s most imminent and aggressive foe. After Matt leaves Mr. Hornbee’s farm, the third “other,” the Native American boys, confront Matt. The Native Americans and the Hessians have languages, cultures, styles, knowledge, and motivations that are different from Matt’s; because of this, they best exemplify the “other” in the story.
Though Matt is initially afraid of these enemies, he soon realizes that they are individuals with emotions, and they aren’t entirely dissimilar from him. He empathizes with their concerns and appreciates when he’s able to break through a communication barrier. Matt ends up feeling not only empathic toward the Native American boys and Gustav the Hessian, but grateful to them: The Native Americans save Hooter when he is about to eat poison berries, and Gustav saves Katie when she treads onto thin river ice.
Most importantly, Matt no longer views these “others” as distant enemies to fear, but as human beings with worthy skills, beliefs, and talents. Instead of flat relief when the rebel soldiers who shot Gustav appear, he feels confusion and a growing disgust as they toy with Gustav’s hat. He is no longer certain, as he was in history class, that he can easily label the “good guys” and “bad guys” (144).
Comfort in the Familiar
The theme of comfort especially from familiar people, places or material objects appears throughout the book. In the early chapters, Katie wants her blanket, and she brings a variety of toy weapons from home for protection in the unfamiliar setting of a campout: a water gun, a bow and arrows, and a sword. To Matt, who has spent ample time visiting Tony, the familiar setting of Tony’s backyard doesn’t make for much of an adventure; in fact, adventuring usually demands that one leave his or her comfort zone. Once in the dark woods, Matt doubts his choice to leave the safety of the campout.
Once Matt realizes he is living through the chilly night of December 25, 1775, he thinks often of home comforts: dinner with his family, TV, the microwave, the warm car, soda, hamburgers, and French fries. He imagines a conversation with his mother and remembers his father cooking on the grill. He is shocked to realize how quickly he could spend six dollars—a fortune to Israel as payment for serving as a soldier—at the local mall. When Israel is dying, Matt tries to interest and comfort Israel with an ongoing description of modern entertainment and conveniences. With every wistful recollection of a person or possession in his modern life, Matt feels increasingly uncomfortable and uncertain in 1775. Everything is cold, confusing, and menacingly unfamiliar.
The rowboat transports the children back to their familiar modern world, and they run through a litany of comforts they look forward to experiencing now that they are home. The author offers this theme of comfort in what is familiar to readers by ending the book in the same setting as it began—the Carlton family dinner table. Even the peas are still there. In the same way that his wartime experiences give Matt a new, grittier, perspective on war, the lack of comforts in 1775 give him a new appreciation of the present. He will no longer take these comforts for granted.
