The author includes a quote from Samuel Johnson before the start of the novel. Why is this quote equally true in Johnson's time, the time of Sharpe's Eagle, and today? Do those men who wish to have been a soldier think of the glory and valor described in other books and movies or warfare as it is vividly described in Sharpe's Eagle?

Sharpe should not get along with officers, yet he is an officer. Harper should not like the English, yet he is a soldier in the British army. How did these two characters come to serve in a military in their respective roles?

Sharpe's Eagle shows human beings at their most violent and destructive. It also shows people behaving according to rules of civil behavior. Describe at least two situations where people behaved in a polite and friendly manner immediately after enacting extreme...