Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was born on June 24, 1842, in Horse Cave Creek, Ohio. His mother was Laura Sherwood and his father was Marcus Aurelius Bierce. Bierce came from a big family; he was number ten out of fourteen children. He was never really close to his parents and always wanted to do things for himself. At the age of four his family moved to Indiana, where he spent most of his teen years. At the age of fifteen he left home to work for an abolitionist’s newspaper company where he was a ‘printer’s devil’. Soon after, he moved to Akron, Ohio with his uncle Lucius Versus Bierce. Young Ambrose deeply admired his uncle not only because he was a lawyer and former Mayor of Akron, but also because he had bravely served in the military. He was inspired by his uncle to attend the Kentucky Military Institute and further his education. After one year, he dropped out and enlisted in the military. “When the Civil war erupted, he enlisted at the age of eighteen as a volunteer in the Ninth Indiana Infantry Regiment” (Grenader). A brave solider, he quickly escalated from Cadet to First Lieutenant. Two years later he was given the position of Major. He fought in numerous battles, including Sherman’s march to the sea, the battle of Shiloh and Chickamauga. After being injured in one of the battles, he was left permanently damaged and was forced to retire. Being able to experience war at first hand would later help him write some of his best known works. After his departure from the military he
settled in San Francisco. At this time, Ambrose started his career as a journalist. In 1867 ...
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...ved by Ambrose dated December 26, 1913. He was never seen or heard of again. Circumstances of his death are uncertain.
Works Sited
“Ambrose (Gwinett) Bierce.’’ Contemporary Authours Online. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature
Resource Center. Web. 8 Mar. 2014
Grenander, M.E. ‘’ Ambrose (Gwinett) Bierce.’’ American Literay Critics and Scholar, 1880-
1900. Ed. John Wilbert Rathbun and Monics M. Grecu. Detroit: Gale Research, 1988.
Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 71. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 Mar.
2014
Grenander, M. E. “Bierce, Ambrose (Gwinnett) (1842-1914).’’ Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature. George B. Perkins, Barbara Perkins, and Phillip Leininger. Vol
1. New York Harper Collins, 1991. 93. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 Mar. 2014
The next four years were spent traveling the states fighting in some of the most well known battles of the Civil War . Ambrose Bierce’s experience during the Civil War where he faced the dangers of nature and man influenced his writing.
A staunch abolitionist, Douglass would take the country by storm through the power of his words and writings. His narrative was unique in regards to how it was written and the content it holds. Unlike most biographies of freed slaves, Douglass would write his own story and with his own words. His narrative would attempt to understand the effects slavery was having on not just the slaves, but the slaveholders as well. The success of his biography, however, did not rest on the amount of horror in it but from the unmistakable authenticity it provided. His narrative would compel his readers to take action with graphic accounts of the lashes slaves would receive as punishment, “the loude...
Ambrose has shown his great admiration for his country, reflecting upon his views for America and writing what he has done to help benefit this country, such as his D-day Museum. He visibly shows his patriotism and his fascination for military history as he recounts stories of World War 2 and the War of 1812 and speaks highly of countries achievements of helping rebuild Europe after the war and gaining independence for colonies held by Japan during the war. He uses imagery, contrasting ideas, and quotes from other historians or Americans to back up his messages he tries to convey to his readers. His background also influenced him very heavily in his writing as well and was what encouraged him to keep on writing to the very end.
Among his best sellers are D-Day, Citizen Soldiers, Band of Brothers, Undaunted Courage and Nothing like it in the World. He was also a consultant for Steven Spielberg’s movie Saving Private Ryan. He is a retired Professor of History. Ambrose is now the director of the Eisenhower Center in New Orleans and is the founder of the National D-Day Museum. He is also a contributing editor of the Quarterly Journal of Military History.
In the short story “Chickamauga”, the author Ambrose Bierce uses a young boy to connect to his audience with what is the disillusions of war, then leads them into the actuality and brutalities of war. Bierce uses a six year old boy as his instrument to relate to his readers the spirits of men going into combat, then transferring them into the actual terrors of war.
The most rational explanation for the disappearance of Bierce is that he came north with Villa, arrived near Ojinaga on January 9, and was either slain during the battle on January 10 or that he died of natural causes sometime during that entire time frame. There is even a small piece of information that tends to prove this proposition: after the revolution several groups of investigators went into Mexico looking for Bierce. One method they used in their research was to interview former villistas who were known to have been at Chihuahua and then at Ojinaga during the same time that Bierce was believed to have been there. One officer, a man reportedly named Ybarra, when shown a photograph of Bierce, said that he had indeed seen him at Ojinaga but that after the assault on the federal garrison (which assault we do not know) he never saw him again. So, it is most reasonable to conclude that Ambrose Bierce died at Ojinaga.
When he was fifteen years old his mother died from appendicitis. From fifteen years of age to his college years he lived in an all-white neighborhood. From 1914-1917, he shifted from many colleges and academic courses of study as well as he changed his cultural identity growing up. He studied physical education, agriculture, and literature at a total of six colleges and universities from Wisconsin to New York. Although he never completed a degree, his educational pursuits laid the foundation for his writing career. He had the knowledge of philosophy and psychology. He attempted to write when he was a youth, but he made a choice to pursue a literary career in 1919. After he published Cane he became part of New York literary circles. He objected both rivalries that prevailed in the fraternity of writers and to attempts to promote him as a black writer (Clay...
...e proper descriptions of Douglass’s experiences. These words also justify that he is brilliant and not no fool. His influential words in the narrative support the message of him being smarter than what some people may believe.
Frederick Douglass. As authors, their books, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Narrative of the Life of
In conclusion, two important literary nonfiction forms that Frederick Douglass identifies in “How I Learned to Read and Write” are a sense of place, and personal experience. Douglass’s essay executed examples of these two forms separately as well as together, numerous times throughout his piece. Douglass centralized his writing around his personal experiences, studying and accomplishing the ability to read and write despite the many difficulties he faced. The portrayal of a sense of place ingrained throughout his writing sheds a light on the locations and stages in his life he experienced these events. He was able to successful correlate these two forms together to create an unforgettable and inspirational story. A story of overcoming adversity, and achieving the impossible in a time whenever all odds were against him.
As one of America’s greatest writers, Ernest Hemmingway recounted his personal life experiences to create his novels. Hemmingway lead an interesting life, filled with romance, travel, and adventure. It was this lifestyle that provided him with much of the material that he used to write his greatest novels. Writing was more of a story telling exercise for Hemmingway, because he had firsthand experience at most of what he wrote about. Hemmingway was also influenced by many of the people he met throughout his life, including women, authors, and news journalists.
Douglass endured a brutal life as he was born into slavery, a major disadvantage, which challenged him to transform not only his own life but the lives of others so that they would not have to experience the torturous life as a slave. Douglass was betrayed by his family as they dropped him off at a plantation because they could not take care of him (PBS N.P.). His brutal life as a slave was compounded by the fact that his parents only gave him one thing in life, a white master. This tragic event allowed Douglass to put immense passion and emotion into his writing. He was not only writing to degrade the slave ridden society but to make a name for himself because he had no family to rely upon. His contributions to literature were immeasurable as he wrote from a perspective that had never been investigated. He added to the Southern culture accurate events that happened and the true life of a slave that historians later picked up. He taught himself how to read and write so his form was completely unique and personal (D...
After dropping out of school, Faulkner worked as a clerk in his grandfather’s bank and in his spare time wrote short stories and poetry and contributed drawings to the University of Mississippi’s yearbook (Locher). His talent was recognized early on by his good friend Phil Stone, Faulkner’s first literary mentor. Stone encouraged and instructed him in his interests and was a constant source of current books and magazines (Faulkner 699). After short stints in the Royal Canadian Air Force and then as a postal service employee, Faulkner, with Stone’s financial assistance, published The Marble Faun, a collection of his poetry. Sales were poor, however, and it was evident that Faulkner’s real talent was in writing fictional short stories and novels. His first novel, Soldier’s Pay, was published in 1926 and was an “impressive achievement…strongly evocative of the sense of alienation experienced by soldiers returning from World War I to a civilian world of which they seemed no longer a part” (Faulkner 699).
All individuals are not just flesh and bones; important in every person is a system of values and beliefs. The philosophies that constitute an author’s creations are frequently devised from major elements of his or her own life. Ernest James Gaines, the author of numerous remarkable books in today’s literature, is a great example of a writer that parallels his life with his work. Specifically, Gaines chooses to focus on his depiction of Southern society back then (and now) to express his beliefs. In addition, his viewpoint of his African American community and background also allows him to communicate deeply universal themes of faith, courage, and dignity with his words. Therefore, Ernest James Gaines is the author he is today due to his early childhood, his education and literary influences, and his writing career which have earned him outstanding awards and recognition.