After the child falls asleep in the woods, the narrator describes the scene using imagery and personification, as seen in the following passage:
The wood birds sang merrily above his head; the squirrels, whisking their bravery of tail, ran barking from tree to tree, unconscious of the pity of it, and somewhere far away was a strange, muffled thunder, as if the partridges were drumming in celebration of nature’s victory over the son of her immemorial enslavers.
The imagery here engages readers’ different senses—they can picture all of the animals moving about the forest while also hearing the birds singing “merrily,” the squirrels “barking,” and the “muffled thunder” similar to the "drumming" sounds of partridges. Since this is one of the moments in which the narrator moves away from the deaf child’s perspective, the narrative is able to tune into the sounds around the boy.
The personification here—in which the narrator personifies nature as a “she”—is particularly notable. In the narrator’s imagination, as the child sleeps, nature is celebrating her “victory over the son of her immemorial enslavers.” This is Bierce’s way of implying that the child getting lost in the woods is a form of retribution for all of the harm that humans have caused nature over the generations. By using the word “enslavers,” Bierce is drawing a connection between how white Americans enslaved Black Americans and how white people used and abused the land itself. In this way, he also nods to the fight over slavery happening in the Civil War.
