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The child’s mother is mentioned three times in the story. First, when the child encounters the “formidable enemy” of the rabbit, he yells out inarticulate cries for his mother. Second, while he sleeps in the forest, the narrator reveals that back at the plantation, a mother’s heart was breaking for her missing child. Although these details do not reveal much about the mother’s character, they do establish a bond that one would expect to find between a mother and her six-year old son. The mother is not mentioned again until the end of the story, when the child discovers the dead body of a woman while inspecting the burned remains of his home. It is not explicitly stated that this woman is his mother, but it is implied because no other women are mentioned in the story, and also, the child screams in grief when he finds her.
The Mother Quotes in Chickamauga
The Chickamauga quotes below are all either spoken by The Mother or refer to The Mother. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chickamauga Quotes
He suddenly found himself confronted with a new and more formidable enemy: in the path that he was following, sat, bolt upright, with ears erect and paws suspended before it, a rabbit! With a startled cry the child turned and fled, he knew not in what direction, calling with inarticulate cries for his mother, weeping, stumbling, his tender skin cruelly torn by brambles, his little heart beating hard with terror—breathless, blind with tears—lost in the forest!
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Somewhere far off was a strange, muffled thunder, as if the partridges were drumming in celebration of nature’s victory over the son of her immemorial enslavers. And back at the little plantation, where white men and black were hastily searching the fields and hedges in alarm, a mother’s heart was breaking for her missing child.
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There, conspicuous in the light of the conflagration, lay the dead body of a woman—the white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long 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—the work of a shell.
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He uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries—something between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey—a startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child was a deaf mute.
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The Mother Character Timeline in Chickamauga
The timeline below shows where the character The Mother appears in Chickamauga. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chickamauga
...of a rabbit. The child, terrified, turns and runs, calls with “inarticulate cries” for his mother, and weeps and stumbles through the forest, suddenly realizing that he is lost. After more...
(full context)
...then he runs, stumbling, around the buildings He sees the dead body of a white woman. She is face up, her hands thrown out, her clothing “deranged,” and her forehead is...
(full context)
