Fantasy of War vs. Reality of War
In “Chickamauga,” a six-year old, deaf-mute child wanders into the forest to play at war. He gets lost, falls asleep, and then wakes up to find himself in the awful aftermath of a Civil War battle. However, through most of the story, the boy doesn’t understand the horrors he is witnessing. Instead, he delights in the spectacle, even pretending to be the maimed soldiers’ leader. The juxtaposition between the way the uncomprehending boy perceives…
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Humanity vs. Nature
“Chickamauga” is set during the Civil War, and shows the aftermath of the battle of Chickamauga through the eyes of a deaf, mute, six-year old Southern white child (who doesn’t really understand what he is seeing). The story, to put it shortly, is about war. But while the most obvious war it portrays is that between men, the story also subtly describes a different war—a battle between man and nature. The story portrays humanity—the boy…
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Reality vs. Imagination
The six-year old, deaf-mute protagonist of “Chickamauga” is often unaware of what is truly happening around him, creating an ironic distance between how the protagonist perceives the events of the story and how the narrator and the reader perceive those same events. This ironic distance works to amplify the story’s themes; the protagonists’ obvious misunderstanding about the reality of what’s going make the reader’s understanding of that reality even stronger. At the same time, while…
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