The movie starts off with Ash Williams and his three other compatriots finding a cabin. They state that they have just found this place and they want to stay here, even though they did not know who owned it or if anyone lived there. Very similar to the Columbus expedition and the European settlement of the Americas. The early settlers also didn’t know whose land it was but they stayed there anyway. Like the early settlers the group of teens knew nothing of what they were getting themselves into. The settlers had to deal with freezing weather, no knowledge of the lay of the land and no way to go back home. The group on the other hand had to deal with demon trees, allegory for the unknown terrain the settlers had to face. In the cabin the teens found a recording of a man reading passages from the Necronomicon. After the recording is finished an ancient evil is released from slumber and it starts attacking the teens. This is a metaphor of John Locke’s works influencing the colonist’s viewpoint on freedom. After which Ash tries to leave the cabin but is stopped by the bridge that they took a few hours earlier being out. The evil attacking the teens is an allegory of the Boston Massacre; the bridge being out was a metaphor on how no matter what happens there was no turning back now for the colonists. In the film the evil possess a teen and makes her attack the other teens. Just like how the early days of the revolution was countrymen against countrymen.
In the second film “Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn,” Ash is the only survivor of the great evil, having to kill his own friends just to survive the night. Like the early colonists, Ash did not think he would have a chance against such insurmountable odds. At the quarter mark of the film, Ash's hand gets taken over by the evil and it attempts to kill him. In the early months of the American Revolution, the lack of basic supplies: food, blankets, ammunition and medicine, made daily desertions commonplace in most forts, essentially killing the war effort. Congress, lacking the funds, deny Washington's plea for more supplies; this leads to a smaller, better army to go against the English. Ash on the other hand decides to cut his demon hand off with a chainsaw. Seeing as how he suddenly became an amputee while fighting an ancient evil; Ash does not see this as a problem, for he customizes the chainsaw to fit his nub and making a chest rig so he can start it . Using his chainsaw appendage, he was easily able to defeat the evil, and send it back using the Necronomicon. The passage Ash reads from the Necronimicon creates a temporal rift and sends the evil to an unknown place and time but, in doing so, Ash is sent along with it. This is a metaphor for how after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the war was no longer about ideals but for a country.
In the third film “Army of Darkness” Ash is transported to an unknown time in English history, this is a metaphor of how the landscape of the war changed after the signing of the Declaration. In the film Ash is again possessed by evil, this time however, instead of lobbing off an appendage, he splits into two entities “Evil Ash” and “Good Ash.” Evil Ash then leads an army of the undead to try and steal the Necronomicon. This is an allegory to General Benedict Arnold's defect to the British Army to aid in the destruction of the newly created United States. Ash aids a band of knights to help repel the army of darkness and to stop them from getting the Necronomicon and the midpoint of the fight another kingdom comes to the rescue when all seemed lost. During the American Revolution several countries aided the colonists after the Battle of Saratoga, giving aid, supplies or training for the troops. The aid those countries gave the new country helped set the stage for an entirely different history. One where freedom is a right to fight for and not a privilege.
