“The Affair of Coulter’s Notch” is a short story in which Ambrose Bierce, the author, presents an often unusual view of war. Captain Coulter, Bierce’s main character, experiences the transformation from white officer to black slave, then, is the result and the reflection of a racial definition forced on him by an act of recognition. According to Wade Newhouse, “It occurs because of the visible effects of his having successfully carried out his military responsibility, an act that simultaneously marks him as black and destroys his family.” Published in the late 1880s, the overpowering nature of war in “The Affair of Coulter’s Notch” may reflect that period. Bierce tells Captain Coulter’s story, but she does not tell his story in first person. Bierce uses the narrator to tell the story. However, the narrator doesn’t just tell the story. The narrator knows something that the other characters don’t. For Example, the narrator knows that Captain Coulter can’t handle the pressure of his military decisions. Readers can infer that the narrator knows more than what can be physically observed. Bierce never tells the readers exactly how or what Captain Coulter is feeling. Which forces the …show more content…
reader to have to carefully observe Captain Coulter’s actions and use of words in order to acknowledge how Captain Coulter feels. Captain Coulter becomes uncomfortable while completing his military duties because he finally realizes how wrong his doings really are.
Colonel," said the adjutant-general, "I don't know that I ought to say anything, but there is something wrong in all this. Do you happen to know that Captain Coulter is from the South?" The colonel responds, "No; was he, indeed?” The adjutant general replies "I heard that last summer the division which the general then commanded was in the vicinity of Coulter's home--camped there for weeks, and--" This creates suspicion in the Colonel and Captain Coulter’s other peers in the workplace. They begin to think that Captain Coulter will eventually replace them for the other side. As soon as he does the Colonel will release an order for Captain Coulter’s
arrest. Captain Coulter is overwhelmed by how much race plays in his job and everyday life. At the end of the short story, the Union troops discovers that their artillery fire has killed a family that resided on the plantation. The bodies of the family seems to be crowded around a black man who they discover is still alive: “Suddenly the man whom they had thought dead raised his head and gazed tranquilly into their faces. His complexion was coal black; the cheeks were apparently tattooed in irregular sinuous lines from the eyes downward. The lips, too, were white, like those of a stage Negro”. This “black” man is revealed to be Captain Coulter, and the dead woman and child his own family. Coulter becomes a black man because of the tight impression of the people that surrounds him. This particular scene displays how race was a big factor during the war.
The symbols and language used in “Battle Royal” allow readers to understand the concept of being black in America; fighting for equality. Symbols such as the white blindfold, stripper, and battle itself all give a suggestion about how the unnamed protagonist felt, but more importantly, Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal” depicts the difficult struggles facing the black man in what’s supposed to be a post-slavery era.
Glathaar, Joseph T. Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers. New York: The Free Press Inc., 1990.
The novel showed a pivotal point prior to the Civil War and how these issues ultimately led to the fueling of quarrel between Americans. While such institutions of slavery no longer exist in the United States, the message resonates with the struggles many groups ostracized today who continue to face prejudice from those in higher
10. Captain Asa was a mean leader and a traitor to the union. He had instant hatred toward Jeff and almost made him change his name. Clardy’s motivation in my novel was to help Watie and the south win the war.
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...
Denmark Vesey by David Robertson, is an important contribution to American historiography. His “detective story” is about a forgotten event, which is commonly overlooked when studying American history. It is undeniable that if the Denmark Vesey revolt had taken place, American history would have been changed forever, with ideas about slavery being changed, and the complete destruction of Charleston, South Carolina. David Robertson adequately relayed the event in a way that portrayed Denmark Vesey to be a hero, and a source of pride for African-Americans.
Douglass, Frederick. The Heroic Slave. In Violence In the Black Imagination. Ed, Ronald T. Takaki. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
“A Confederacy of Dunces” is a brilliant satire written by the deceased John Kennedy Toole. Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the satire after its publication in 1981. The book became a cult classic soon after its publication and has since transferred over into the literary cannon in some curriculums. In my analysis I will focus on the three main themes found in the book; slavery, work ethic, and fate.
In the novel, the author proposes that the African American female slave’s need to overcome three obstacles was what unavoidably separated her from the rest of society; she was black, female, and a slave, in a white male dominating society. The novel “locates black women at the intersection of racial and sexual ideologies and politics (12).” White begins by illustrating the Europeans’ two major stereotypes o...
In The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, emotional violence takes an aggressive toll not only on Douglass, but also his master Mr. Covey, his family, and fellow slaves. During his time with Covey, Douglass was affected deeply by the strain of slavery, especially in spirit and ways of hope. Mr. Covey was infamous for his reputation as a ‘‘nigger-breaker” and induced fear into slaves, emotionally scarring them (Douglass 53).
Book Titile: The Art of Command in the Civil War. Contributors: Steven E. Woodworth - editor. Publisher: University of Nebraska Press. Place of Publication: Lincoln, NE. Publication Year: 1998
Preisser, Thomas M. “The Virginia Decision to Use Negro Soldiers in the Civil War, 1864-1865.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 83, no. 1 (January 1975): 98-113. Accessed April 14, 2014. http://jstor.org/stable/4247927.
The reader is put in the middle of a war of nerves and will between two men, one of which we have grown up to learn to hate. This only makes us even more emotional about the topic at hand. For a history book, it was surprisingly understandable and hard to put down. It enlightened me to the complex problems that existed in the most memorable three months this century.
In “Sonny’s Blues”, author James Baldwin used first person as the narration. His first person narrator was a main character in the story who shared dialogue very consistently throughout the entire story with other characters. The narrator is “Sonny’s Blues” included thoughts and actions of their own. In “Lusus Naturae”, Margaret Atwood used first-person as well. Although Atwood and Baldwin used the narrator as a main character in the story, the narrator in “Lusus Naturae” was different than the narrator in “Sonny’s Blues.” The narrator in “Lusus Naturae” used very minimum dialogue with other characters. Atwood’s narrator never had a response from another character and the narrator’s motives were explained through the description of her actions in the story. “Lusus Naturae” would be easier for a reader to understand based on how the author used the narrator’s point of view and how the author used dialogue between the narrator and other characters in the
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.