Chickamauga Bierce Theme

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Chickamauga Analysis
The Civil War forced citizens across the United States to face the realities and understand the consequences of war forcefully, due to the presence of the highest American casualties in any war, happening to be fought on the homefront.
Ambrose Bierce showcases his personal experience in battle through the events of “Chickamauga”, including gore, personal loss, and shock. This story tells of a young child that ends up in the aftermath of the second most costly battle of the Civil War, and the magnitude of the losses each person must bear due to violent conflict.
Ambrose Bierce’s use of: Tone, Imagery, and Point of View prove that experience and understanding must be applied to the evaluation of topics, and is illustrated …show more content…

As the boy has now speaking or hearing ability, visual perception is heavily relied upon throughout the short story, and shows how this unilateral analyzation could be misconstrued by observers with less experience. “But on and ever on they crept, these maimed and bleeding men, as heedless as he of the dramatic contrast between his laughter and their own ghastly gravity. To him it was a merry spectacle.” This quote shows the misinterpretation of the scene by the boy’s reaction, unknowingly cruel and torturous showing his lack of a grasp on injury and death. The description present in this quote truly shows the seriousness of the situation, however the boy is not able to realize this in contrast to the reader. Imagery in “Chickamauga” is not only of gore and violence, but of beauty and peace in the exposition. The imagery in “Chickamauga” definitively shows the differences between the information that the boy perceives and what is truly present. This imagery also highlights exactly what the boy is seeing and shows his inexperience in interpreting the situation he is in. “All their faces were singularly white and many were streaked and gouted with red. Something in this--something too, perhaps, in their grotesque attitudes and movements--reminded him of the painted clown whom he had seen last summer in the circus, and he laughed as he watched them. This quote shows the injuries many of the soldiers have attained over the course of the battle and describe their appearance in striking detail. Despite this gruesome appearance the child believes the injured soldiers to be clown-like or resembling something that they aren’t. These impressively realistic descriptions are only a product of first-hand experience, which Bierce possesses as a Civil War

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