This is moreover me looking at all the various fiction retellings (and poems, surprisingly found a few) about this guy and realizing how much people glaze him for the patriotic virtue of self sacrifice. Not to say he isn’t a hero. But the tale is a bit exaggerated. In fact, those famous last words are at best a chopped up version, and at worst something his friend William Hull (same Hull who would surrender Detriot in the War of 1812, and nearly get executed…not by rope but by firing squad, for it, only to get pardoned by the president), made up. He wasn’t there at the execution btw.

Which is to say, literary analysis on each interpretation of these tales and say how the stories portrayed patriotism in them.