Ambrose Bierce’s short story “Chickamauga” Essay

Ambrose Bierces Chickamauga is a disillusi wholenessd babys awakening. Literally, a sextet stratum old deaf son is obnubilate into a most horrifically traumatic series of in timets. His story is relayed in the trio person omniscient perspective finished the eyes of the kid as well as an elder. It takes place during the Civil War in a southern t give. Chickamauga begins with the boys entrance into the forest where he goes to play solitarily. With him he carries a toy wooden leaf blade with which he battles imaginary enemies to their deaths. Lost in his adventure the boy grows tired and waterfall asleep between two rocks deep in the woods. While he is a sleep a battle occurs unbeknownst to him. Several hours after the peasant wakes up and nonices alien figures crawling to wards him. Without knowing the gravity of the bunk occurring before his oblivious eyes, he makes a game of it all.The child assumes a leader position for what he has finally determined to be men, and gui des them towards a red light. The red light turns out to be his house on fire. When the child finally reaches the fire he is dampicularly amused by the raging spectacle. He searches desperately for fuel and finally commits his toy sword to the fire. Suddenly the boy sincereizes that fire is his own home. Horrified he studies the dark scene. He then stumbles upon his brutally murdered mother. The flyspeck child gets passing upset, and at this point the reader learns that child is a deaf-mute. The story backside be divided into three essential stages, representational of the boys progression from innocence to forced maturity. The boy advances through innocence, progression to familiarity with satisfyingness, and awakening. The small child enters the forest joyfully and carelessly, he leaves with tremendous fear, depression, and realization. The forest is emblematical of middle ground between innocence and horrible reality.The six course old enters the forest as an innocent c hild with no endure in reality. All of his days until this one have been a dulcorate coated fondness. Hes spent numerous hours reading and education about the glories and fairy tale aspects of war with his father. This little boy was natural into warrior-blood. All of his predecessors were soldiers including his father. He enjoyed learning about war. However, the fatal mistake of this six yearold little boys sustenance was his industrious interest in combat. It was his interest which led him deep into the forest playing, battling fantasy foes. His fight, his game, his reality until this point in his life was fabricated.The reader gets a real sense of his naivety when he encounters a rabbit and is terrified. Maybe the child has never seen a rabbit before, or maybe he has seen one plentyed in a dark light. All facts of this boys life until this fateful journey into the woods have been given to him. The knowledge he possessed was second hand it seems as though hed never experie nced anything himself. His father had delivered all of the information the boy held through books, which ironically glorified war. This childs tragic encounter with war was so foreign and inconceivable to him that when it so brutally hit him he doesnt even realize it.The woods in Chickamauga epitomise the cruelty of reality. At his entrance into the forest, this completely innocent six year old begins his journey towards the horrors that await him. When the boy is in the forest he cries himself asleep, terrified of the new and unknown paths hes traveled. While hes asleep a battle occurs and his house is set on fire. However the child is deaf so he does not memorize what is going on. Finally he wakes up to see what look equal animals, which in actuality are the soldiers retreating from the battle that has just occurred, and becomes innately curious. He did not understand what they were, he didnt know whether they were dogs, horses, bears, he had no idea. As they got closer he saw little only that these were men, yet crept kindred babies. This fact intrigued him. As he inspected the men he laughed at their unfamiliar state, and related them to clowns hed seen in a circus.Their bloody faces reminded him of the tonality on the clowns faces. This optimistic association reveals his ignorance of what actually happened. He then recalled that at his home the Negroes had crawled on their hands and knees for his entertainment. He thought it to be a good, fun idea to attempt to ride one of the soldiers. The child gets a thrust into reality when he is thrown off the man and afterward forced to see his mangled face. When the boy looks at the man he sees a face that lacked a lower jawfrom the upper teething to the throat was a great red gap fringed with temporary removal shreds of flesh and splinters of bone. The reader gets a real sense of the childs naivety when the child is only slightlydisturbed, as he had been with the rabbit. This forces the child to take a s lightly more somber view of the situation.However even after this horrific encounter the boy is mute fairly oblivious to what is happening. He witnesses death all around him. When the child sees the soldiers lying dead in the water, his eyes expanded with wonder even his hospitable understanding could not accept a phenomenon implying such vital force as that. It was not in the childs range of instauration to even take in such horror. It is after this encounter with the befuddled soldier that the boy catches sight of the red light which guides him to his miserable fate. aft(prenominal) obtaining a more serious perception of the state of affairs, the boy positions himself as leader of the soldiers. It seems at this point that the child has gained some insight into reality from the grotesqueness of the bloody soldiers, but still significantly less than a more aware, less naive person would have acquired. This becomes apparent when the boy is at the fire and enjoys its flaring spect acle to no end. The boy is ecstatic and dances with the flames destroy his house. He even tries to fuel it. The boy searches around the yard for objects to throw in, all are too heavy. He is finally forced to cede his sword. With his sword the child surrenders his innocence. Suddenly with no warning or go the boys disillusion detonates and reality afflicts him. He realizes that the fire is his own house.Horrified at his abrupt realization the boy runs with stumbling feet, frightened at what he is witnessing. At this point he encounters his mother. He sees her with the clothing deranged, the spacious dark hair in tangles and full of clotted blood. The greater part of the forehead was torn away, and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, overflowing the temple, a frothy mass of gray, crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles. This is his final jolt that forces him to the rock-bottom, net darkness of reality. This sight of his mother, probably raped, brutally murdered jerks him into shock. Traumatized, the young boy moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries. This is his horrible awakening.Chickamauga is representational not only of the boys awakening, but of human awakening as well. The childs initial entry into the forest is symbolic ofevery journey we take as humans into the unknown. In the forest he acquired immense amounts of insight into what reality could be, but had trouble comprehending the severity of what he was witnessing. It was not until the trauma personally affected him that the small child was taken with(p) with what actually happened. This is parallel for most humans in their experiences with trauma.Trauma is real and depressing when it is witnessed personally by someone, but when it is inflicted upon someone we know or love it becomes so intensely real that it is impossible to grasp. This impossible founding is analogous to the small boys incoherent cries and ges tures at the end. The thievery of this childs innocence was slow and unperceivable in the forest, but most definitely contributed to the final jolt the child felt at the end. The boy slowly progressed towards reality, and when it finally clicked it was appalling.