Just imagine, actually being free from slavery, nothing to worry about, except for the fact that your Pa is fighting in a horrible war. I want you to think about seeing your Pa get stabbed by a bayonet, only to go home to find that your Ma has been kidnapped by the British. Finally, think about having the chance, to actually get re-instated and become a slave again. These are some of the main conflicts in the story, War Comes to Willy Freeman by James and Christopher Collier. All of these problems happen to occur to the narrator, a teenage girl named Wilhelmina Freeman. Her Pa gets killed, her Ma is taken, and she might get returned to slavery. But somehow, someway, she overcomes all of those conflicts to find a resolution.
One of the larger conflicts throughout the whole book is that her Ma was taken by the British and Willy is trying to find her. She first begins this large journey by taking her deceased father’s boat down to Newport, to see her aunt. When her aunt asks her who she came with, she replies, “No ma’am, I came by myself. The British took Ma down to New York”. (Willy on page 45) Her uncle Jack Arabus then told Willy to make the long trip down to New York to Black Sam Fraunce’ tavern because he believed that Sam could help. When she’s at the tavern she meets the man and he says that she can stay and work there while looking for her Ma. Willy ends up looking all over New York for her but was unable to find her. So as an act of desperate hope she sends a letter to her aunt, telling her that she was okay and asking about her mother. A few months later she gets a letter back with terrible news. Her aunt told her that her mother was ill and about to die. So Willy makes the bold decision to go back to Connecticut to see her mother before she passes. When she gets to the Ivers’ house, she finds her Ma lying in the basement with no medical help whatsoever. She explodes and runs to the doctor to see if he would give her medicine but he said it was too late. When she got back to the house her Ma was in fact dying. Consequently she did end up dying but although her Ma was dead, Willy did find her and she resolved the conflict.
Another main conflict in the novel was that with no parents, Willy had the chance to get put back into slavery. When she went to her Aunt Betsy the first time she tried to see if she could live there and work for the Ivers’. When they actually discussed this with them, Mr.Ivers exclaimed, “She’s staying, until I decide what to do with her.” Instantaneously, Willy new that she had to get out of there or else she would be returned to the horrible life she knew she hated. So, at the first chance she had, she escaped from the house and sailed away in her Pa’s Jollyboat.
However, the last main conflict in the historical fiction book, War Comes to Willy Freeman by James and Christopher Collier is that Jack Arabus, Willy’s uncle, might be kept as a slave although the law states that he is free. When a slave wants to sign up for the war, the law back then was that they were to be freed so they can in fact fight for their country. So Jack was forced to take it to court where he and 300 other black slaves were freed. This case is actually pretty popular and is known as Arabus v. Ivers.
Even though there were many conflicts in the story War Comes to Willy Freeman by Christopher and James Collier, all of them were resolved and Willy really lived happily ever after. I really enjoyed this book because there were many twists and turns. At the end of the story she exclaims proudly that at that moment, she was “Grown up; and it was all going to be new.”
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