Burr - Aaron Burr

Until the novel Burr, Aaron Burr was just a footnote in the figurative textbook of American history. He has long been known for the fatal shooting of Alexander Hamilton in 1804, the charges of treason brought against him in 1807, and less notably for his term as vice President of the United States. Burr finnaly put a personal story to the man whose legendary temperament

and bitterness gave the impression of a real life Scrooge. The novel does not portray the main charicter as an entirely positive figure; and on the same note, does not put him in a completley negative light either. The opinion of Burr himself is derived completley from the reader, taking in the good and bad, respectivley. With this in mind, it makes the absorption

of both positve and negative information from the text more objective.

As to follow the stereotype, the aspects of the book that portray Burr in a negative light will be examend first. Perhaps the most obvious and definitely

the primary mention of a question to Burrs charicter resides in the beging pages of the book. Although this lists information that would be considered common knowledge

of Burr, it tends to set a negative tone when the uppermost negative events of his life are listed primary to any other information:

"In 1804 Colonel Burr--then vice-president of the United States--shot and killed General Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Three years after this lamentable affair, Colonel Burr was arrested by order of president Thomas Jefferson and charged with treason for having wanted to break up the United States. A court presided over by Chief Justice John Marshall found Colonel Burr innocent of treason but guilty of the misdemeanor

of proposing an invasion of Spanish territory in order to make himself emporer of Mexico... The new Mrs. Aaron Burr is the widow of the wine merchant Stephen Jumel; reputedley; she is the richest woman in New York City, having begun her days humbly, but no doubt cheerfully in a brothel..."

Does this preface the majority of information to support the widespread theory that Burr is a chronically negative person? Quite possibly when the man closest to him embraces that negativness:

"I find Colonel Burr's 'unsavouriness' as a nice contrast to the canting tone of our own day."

We have all known someone whose poor attitude is almost refreshing in the monotiny of everyday life. Does the novel at this point portray Burr as a negative person or do the people in the novel portray Burr as a negative person? It all depends about how you look at it. In one case the reader could see these two quotes at the beginning

of the book as a way to build Burr's charicter...to show what he has gone through...or....it could be to put him down, for as in four pages not a single positive thing has been said about him.

But the negative references do not stop there. In one of the more powerful

references to Burr, he is compared