Analysis Of Ambrose Bierce's A Horseman In The Sky

851 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Us civil war informative essay

In the short story “A Horseman in the Sky” Ambrose Bierce establishes the action of the story during the American Civil War and how the war takes a toll on a family in a dismal situation. The story calls attention to a Federal soldier who goes on to fight the war as a young man in the Union and eventually murders his father in a very crude manner. Bierce points out that this is a capital crime under military law, meriting the death penalty, and also offers the opinion that the man's execution, if he were to be found out and tried, would be just. The young man is careless in his actions and ultimately puts his fellow soldiers lives in serious danger. The Civil War tore many families apart and created such animosity amongst blood relatives that the value of family meant less than what side of the war a soldier was fighting for. In the beginning Bierce provides a small amount of Druse's history, describing how he came to be in the present situation. Later, the young man Druse announces to his father over breakfast his objective to enlist in the Union army (28). To his father surprise, he responds, "Well, go, sir, and whatever may occur do what you conceive to be your duty. Virginia, to which …show more content…

Bierce’s portrays in “A Horseman in the Sky” is the cruelty and horror of the Civil War, and the plot of the story is a young man’s struggle between patriotism and familial duties. It presents the very hardships that many relatives faced during the Civil War and how one could lose sight of their love of family. Druse’s hesitation before lowering the aim of his rifle to shoot the horse, could just as well have been caused by the fact that every enemy in this war was in some way his family. Ultimately he realizes that no matter at whom he will be aiming, the enemy is and will always be the emblem of his

Show More
Related

  • The 54th Regiment of Massachusetts: African-American Soldiers of the Civil War

    2301 Words  | 5 Pages

    Duncan, Russell, ed. Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1992.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Shaara´s Killer Angels

    1185 Words  | 3 Pages

    Shaara’s novel Killer Angels shows the battle of Gettysburg through a number of unique viewpoints. Shaara offers a more intimate view of the battle than other Civil War novels. A reader can see the battle through the eyes of both Union and Confederate leaders. Through the novel the reader is able to see why each character is fighting and what they hope to gain from the war. Readers can also see the effect that the war has on the different characters. I will examine the war through the eyes of several different characters from Shaara’s novel.

    Read More

  • Killer Angels Analysis

    629 Words  | 2 Pages

    As he immerses his audience into combat with the soldiers, Shaara demonstrates the more emotional aspects of war by highlighting the personal lives of the men fighting. For example, when Shaara reveals the pasts of James Longstreet and Lewis Armistead’s, I started to picture them as the men that they were and not as soldiers out for blood. After suffering a devastating loss of three of his children to fever, Longstreet is tossed into battle. In Armistead’s case, he not only suffered the loss of his wife, but also of a friend fighting on the Union side, General Winfield Scott Hancock. Shaara saves his readers a front row seat to the inner turmoil of General Chamberlain regarding his hindering duty as a soldier clashes with his duty to family as he strived to serve the Union as well as protec...

    Read More

  • Captian Vere's reactions to Billy Budd in Billy Budd

    414 Words  | 1 Pages

    Yet, when the baffled surgeon confirms Vere’s worst fears, he becomes “motionless, standing absorbed in thought.” He then convulsively compares Billy to the Angel of Death. Here, Vere is beginning to recognize the consequences of this event, and the necessary actions he must take as captain. Captain Vere returns to his intellectual, patriotic nature, as he becomes again the man whose “settled convictions were as a dike against those invading waters of novel opinion social, political, and otherwise.” Vere is not one given easily to fits of discomfiture or moral dilemma. He believes strongly in the right of his nation and military, and disciplines himself and his men accordingly. Yet, for the first time we are aware of, Vere becomes torn between his father-like love for Billy and his son-like love for his country.

    Read More

  • Chandra Manning's What This Cruel War Was Over

    1292 Words  | 3 Pages

    What This Cruel War Was Over evaluates the American Civil War through the eyes of both northern and southern soldiers. By examining the conflict through this lens, Chandra Manning delivers a narrative with intricacies that explore an in-depth perspective to a greater degree than other authors have in the past. Revealing how men thought about slavery and the Civil War frames her book, and the examples she utilizes to fulfill her goal in arguing her thesis conveys an original body of work. Additionally, several of the concepts established in the author’s book are also discussed through various methods in other books.

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis Of Horses Of The Night

    1107 Words  | 3 Pages

    When individuals face obstacles in life, there is often two ways to respond to those hardships: some people choose to escape from the reality and live in an illusive world. Others choose to fight against the adversities and find a solution to solve the problems. These two ways may lead the individuals to a whole new perception. Those people who decide to escape may find themselves trapped into a worse or even disastrous situation and eventually lose all of their perceptions and hops to the world, and those who choose to fight against the obstacles may find themselves a good solution to the tragic world and turn their hopelessness into hopes. Margaret Laurence in her short story Horses of the Night discusses the idea of how individual’s responses

    Read More

  • The Guilt They Carried in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried

    1414 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the aftermath of a comparatively minor misfortune, all parties concerned seem to be eager to direct the blame to someone or something else. It seems so easy to pin down one specific mistake that caused everything else to go wrong in an everyday situation. However, war is a vastly different story. War is ambiguous, an enormous and intangible event, and it cannot simply be blamed for the resulting deaths for which it is indirectly responsible. Tim O’Brien’s story, “In the Field,” illustrates whom the soldiers turn to with the massive burden of responsibility for a tragedy. The horrible circumstances of war transform all involved and tinge them with an absurd feeling of personal responsibility as they struggle to cope.

    Read More

  • The Things They Carried Character Analysis Essay

    1067 Words  | 3 Pages

    Each soldier carries many things both physically and mentally during times of war and strife. For the war, The United States implements a draft in which young men are drafted and forced to go into the military for the war. Many of these soldiers are young, immature, and escape adulthood, yet there is one phase of life that cannot be avoided: death. Cross felt responsible for the younger kids’ death because he felt it was his job to protect the innocent.

    Read More

  • The Killer Angels Book Analysis

    1040 Words  | 3 Pages

    Chamberlain is the main Union leader in this novel and he provides the different view of the War than the Lee but in the rank of a colonel he is significantly lower than Lee. He was one of the interesting Union soldiers of the Civil War and he was of popular Union commander. At first, he was the college professor from the State of Maine, he volunteered to serve as a Union Army of American Civil War. He had an interesting life. He was an excellent soldier by the end of the war. But this gentleman accepted the surrender of the Confederate forces at the town in central Virginia called Appomattox. In this novel the author tries to strike an exact balance between college professor and as a soldier and he was more educated and thoughtful than other soldiers. He likes to evaluate everything he sees in his life, but through poetically and he has more experience with the battle than many other characters in “The Killer Angel”. His brother, Tom is his aides because of that he had difficult position and he realizes that he may be required to make an order Tom into harm’s way, maybe to his death. As a Union soldiers during the Civil War, he was the soldier with the soul of a poet and he provides the best and insightful analysis with the feelings and motivations in this

    Read More

  • Military Strategy and Tactics of the Civil War

    1372 Words  | 3 Pages

    Book Title: The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature and Research. Contributors: Robin Higham - editor, Steven E. Woodworth - editor. Publisher: Greenwood Press. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 1996

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Richard Wagamese's 'Indian Horse'

    2006 Words  | 5 Pages

    Both Saul Indian Horse and Winston Smith use writing as a means of survival from repression. In Indian Horse, Saul uses writing as a means of seeing what made him turn away from the pain of his rape and cease repressing its happening; for him survive and live on with his life. Saul writes memoirs to find the hidden answers of why he turned to violence and alcoholism and using them to break free of the cycle. From pages two to three Saul says “They say I can’t understand where I’m going if I don’t understand where I’ve been. The answers are within me, according to them. By telling our stories, hardcore drunks like me can set ourselves free from the bottle and the life that took us there …. So Moses gave me permission to write things down. So

    Read More

  • Brief Commentary on Ride the Dark Horse by Stefan Judge

    525 Words  | 2 Pages

    The plot of the story, “Ride the Dark Horse”, was very interesting. In the beginning, the character didn’t think that he should do anything so that he wouldn’t have to “face facts”. However, one day he went on a fishing trip with his father. On the trip he met a boy, Jean Paul, whose father offered him a job picking up logs from a river. As they were collecting the wood, Jean Paul decided to go fishing. Jean Paul then cast his line when it accidentally got caught in a tree. The lure hooked onto his face and sliced at his chest, hurting him severely. The other boy then pulled Jean Paul into his canoe and paddled them all the way to the doctor, despite the boy’s original intention to avoid doing anything. A thought-provoking storyline transpired throughout the text.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Tony Horwitz's Book, Confederates in the Attic

    1878 Words  | 4 Pages

    The American Civil war is considered to be one of the most defining moments in American history. It is the war that shaped the social, political and economic structure with a broader prospect of unifying the states and hence leading to this ideal nation of unified states as it is today. In the book “Confederates in the Attic”, the author Tony Horwitz gives an account of his year long exploration through the places where the U.S. Civil War was fought. He took his childhood interest in the Civil War to a new level by traveling around the South in search of Civil War relics, battle fields, and most importantly stories. The title “Confederates in the Attic”: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War carries two meanings in Tony Horwitz’s thoughtful and entertaining exploration of the role of the American Civil War in the modern world of the South. The first meaning alludes to Horwitz’s personal interest in the war. As the grandson of a Russian Jew, Horwitz was raised in the North but early in his childhood developed a fascination with the South’s myth and history. He tells readers that as a child he wrote about the war and even constructed a mural of significant battles in the attic of his own home. The second meaning refers to regional memory, the importance or lack thereof yet attached to this momentous national event. As Horwitz visits the sites throughout the South, he encounters unreconstructed rebels who still hold to outdated beliefs. He also meets groups of “re-enactors,” devotees who attempt to relive the experience of the soldier’s life and death. One of his most disheartening and yet unsurprising realizations is that attitudes towards the war divide along racial lines. Too many whites wrap the memory in nostalgia, refusing...

    Read More

  • All Quiet on the Western Front and the Horrors of War

    728 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of the worst things about war is the severity of carnage that it bestows upon mankind.  Men are killed by the millions in the worst ways imaginable.  Bodies are blown apart, limbs are cracked and torn and flesh is melted away from the bone.  Dying eyes watch as internal organs are spilled of empty cavities, naked torso are hung in trees and men are forced to run on stumps when their feet are blown off.  Along with the horrific deaths that accompany war, the injuries often outnumber dead men. As Paul Baumer witnessed in the hospital, the injuries were terrifying and often led to death.  His turmoil is expressed in the lines, “Day after day goes by with pain and fear, groans and death gurgles. Even the death room I no use anymore; it is too small.”  The men who make it through the war take with them mental and physical scarification from their experiences.

    Read More

  • A Man Called Horse Character Analysis

    350 Words  | 1 Pages

    Dorothy Johnson in “A Man Called Horse” writes about a young man who was born and raised in Boston. He lives in a gracious home under his grandmothers and grandfather’s loving care. For some reason, he is discontent. He leaves home to try to find out the reason for his discontent. Upon leaving he undergoes a change in status and opinion of himself and others. He begins a wealthy young man arrogant and spoiled, becomes a captive of Crow Indians- docile and humble, and emerges a man equal to all.

    Read More

More about Analysis Of Ambrose Bierce's A Horseman In The Sky

Open Document