The Rifle

As the author, Gary Paulsen, consistently personifies the Rifle of the title, it seems appropriate to list the Rifle as the central character of the novel. The Rifle was created around 1768 by Cornish McManus, an apprentice gunsmith who had just opened a new store in Pennsylvania. Enamored of a special piece of "curly" maple stock, McManus set about to create his life's work, the Rifle, a masterpiece of beauty and engineering.

The Rifle features several innovations that separated it from other rifles of the time, and especially from smoothbore guns that had no rifling whatsoever. The length of the rifling in the barrel is actually close to the perfect length for the caliber of bullet chosen, resulting in remarkable accuracy. And the stock of the gun (the wooden part) was sloped in an innovative way for even more accuracy.

Paulsen depicts the Rifle as an ominous and...