Chickamauga

by

Ambrose Bierce

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Fantasy of War vs. Reality of War Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Fantasy of War vs. Reality of War Theme Icon
Humanity vs. Nature Theme Icon
Reality vs. Imagination Theme Icon
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Fantasy of War vs. Reality of War Theme Icon

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 war and how the story’s narrator and reader perceive the battle, coupled with the boy’s final awful realization that this battle has destroyed his home and killed his family, has two affects. First, it amplifies the pure horror of war; the boy’s inability to perceive that horror makes it all the more obvious to the reader. Second, it condemns the boy’s idea—and all those who share that idea—of war as being heroic and exciting as not just naïve but complicit in promoting war and all its brutal destruction.

The story quickly establishes that the boy believes war to be exciting and glorious. Just as importantly, though, the story also makes clear that the boy’s view is not unique to him, or to little boys. Rather, the story shows how such simplistic views of war are widespread among adults as well. The child begins the story by wandering into the forest with a toy sword, suggesting that he thinks of weapons as toys and battles as games. He pretends to be a soldier, fighting “invisible foes.” When the boy gets lost in the woods, he cries himself to sleep, while comforting himself with his toy sword which he sees as his “companion.” The capacity to commit violence gives the boy comfort. When the boy wakes up and finds himself surrounded by wounded soldiers (he slept through the Civil War battle of Chickamauga because of his deafness), he regards them as “a merry spectacle,” moving among them freely and riding them like horses. He “placed himself in the lead, his wooden sword still in hand, and solemnly directed the march...” The child views the wounded soldiers as fun playmates, not as casualties in a devastating battle. Crucially, the story explains the origin of the boy’s ideas about war. The boy’s father was once a soldier, and “in the peaceful life of a planter the warrior-fire survived,” such that the father loved “military books and pictures.” The boy learned his ideas about war from his father. The story, then, makes it impossible to simply dismiss the boy’s views as a result of being six years old, deaf, or mute. By connecting the boy’s ideas to his father’s ideas, the story indicates that such ideas are inherited from family and society—and makes clear that these ideas of war as being simple, heroic, and glorious are widespread.

The story then uses a variety of methods to poke increasingly larger holes in the boy’s—and society’s—simplistic ideas about war. One way the story does this is through style. The story describes the child’s war-play in the forest in language that is flowery and intense: at one point it describes the boy’s toy sword as “the weapon he bore bravely, as became the son of an heroic race.” This language is so flowery and intense, in fact, that it is best described as mock-heroic: its intensity is meant to hint that it, and the ideas of the boy it describes, should not be taken seriously.

The narrator also makes the juxtaposition between the boy’s understanding and an adult understanding more explicit. The narrator describes soldiers who are “maimed and bleeding,” and mentions that some are so wounded that they drown when they try to drink water. The narrator then states that  “not all of this did the child note; it is what would have been noted by an elder observer.” Through tone and detail the story and its narrator build an ironic rift between what the child perceives and what the narrator and the reader both perceive, heightening the tension between the child’s fantasy of war—a fantasy that the story has made clear is held by many who are not children at all—and its actual brutal reality.

In addition to using its style, the story also shows the dangerous and tragic foolishness of the boy’s views through the events of the story. After “leading” the army of wounded soldiers, the boy sees a fire: “the spectacle pleased, and he danced with glee in imitation of the wavering flames.” The reaction to violent destruction here is typical for the child: he’s excited by it, just as the story makes clear his father was excited by fighting and defeating “savages” many years earlier.  Soon after, however, the boy discovers that the fire has destroyed his home and that his family has been killed. The implication is that the devastation of battle spun out beyond just the battle, and resulted in destruction of civilians as well. In this moment the story also makes clear that the destruction of war isn’t ever contained by war—it isn’t limited to the soldiers or armies involved. Instead, it spins out of control, resulting in destruction to those like the boy’s family not even taking active part. The destruction that excited the boy now devastates him and the boy’s naïve fantasies of war are punctured. The mock-heroic language describing those original fantasies gives way to the boy’s “inarticulate and indescribable cries” as he looks down at the body of his dead mother.

The boy’s journey—from playing at the fantasy of war, to reveling in destruction, to despair at the actual, brutal, uncontrollable outcomes of war—demonstrates just how ridiculous and tragic those original fantasies were. By tying the boy’s simplistic fantasies about war to those of the broader culture, and showing how the boy’s journey led to the loss of everything he had, the story takes aim at society and humanity more generally, and implies that the simplistic glorification of war will only ever lead to tragedy and self-destruction.

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Fantasy of War vs. Reality of War Quotes in Chickamauga

Below you will find the important quotes in Chickamauga related to the theme of Fantasy of War vs. Reality of War.
Chickamauga Quotes

This child’s spirit, in bodies of its ancestors, had for thousands of years been trained to memorable feats of discovery and conquest…From the cradle of its race it had conquered its way through two continents and passing a great sea had penetrated a third, there to be born to war and dominion as a heritage.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Child
Page Number: 41
Explanation and Analysis:

In his younger manhood the father had been a soldier, had fought against naked savages and followed the flag of his country into the capital of a civilized race to the far South. In the peaceful life a planter the warrior-fire survived; once kindled, it is never extinguished. The man loved military books and pictures and the boy had understood enough to make himself a wooden sword, though even the eye of his father would hardly have known it for what it was. This weapon he now bore bravely, as became the son of an heroic race.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Child, The Father
Related Symbols: The Toy Sword
Page Number: 41
Explanation and Analysis:

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!

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Child, The Mother
Page Number: Page 42
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Child, The Mother, The Father, The Slaves
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 42
Explanation and Analysis:

Suddenly he saw before him a strange moving object which he took to be some large animal—a dog, a pig—he could not name it; perhaps it was a bear…But something in the form or movement of this object—something in the awkwardness of its approach—told him it was not a bear, and curiosity was stayed by fear. He stood still and as it came slowly on gained courage every moment, for he saw that at least it had not the long, menacing ears of the rabbit…Before it had approached near enough to resolve his doubts he saw that it was followed by another and another. To right and left were many more; the whole open space about him was alive with them—all moving toward the brook.

They were men. They crept upon their hands and knees

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Child, The Soldiers
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 42-43
Explanation and Analysis:

Not all of this did the child note; it is what would have been noted by an elder observer; he saw little but that these were men, yet crept like babes. Being men, they were not terrible, though unfamiliarly clad. He moved among them freely, going from one to another and peering into their faces with childish curiosity. All their faces were singularly white and many were streaked and gouted with red. Something in this—something too, perhaps, in their grotesque attitudes and movements—reminded him of the painted clown whom he had seen last summer in the circus, and he laughed as he watched them. But on and ever on they crept, these maimed and bleeding men, as heedless as he of the dramatic contrast between his laughter and their own ghastly gravity. To him it was a merry spectacle. He had seen his father’s negroes creep upon their hands and knees for his amusement—had ridden them so, “making believe” they were horses. He now approached one of these crawling figures from behind and with an agile movement mounted it astride.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Child, The Soldiers, The Slaves
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

An observer of better experience in the use of his eyes would have noticed that these footprints pointed in both directions; the ground had been twice passed over—in advance and in retreat. A few hours before, these desperate, stricken men, with their more fortunate and now distant comrades, had penetrated the forest in thousands. Their successive battalions, breaking into swarms and reforming in lines, had passed the child on every side—had almost trodden on him as he slept. The rustle and murmur of their march had not awakened him. Almost within a stone’s throw of where he lay they had fought a battle; but all unheard by him were the roar of the musketry, the shock of the cannon, “the thunder of the captains and the shouting.” He had slept through it all, grasping his little wooden sword with perhaps a tighter clutch in unconscious sympathy with his martial environment, but as heedless of the grandeur of the struggle as the dead who had died to make the glory.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Child, The Soldiers
Related Symbols: The Toy Sword
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 44-45
Explanation and Analysis:

[The child] approached the blazing ruin of a dwelling. Desolation everywhere! In all the wide glare not a living thing was visible. He cared nothing for that; the spectacle pleased, and he danced with glee in imitation of the wavering flames. He ran about, collecting fuel, but every object that he found was too heavy for him to cast in from the distance to which the heat limited his approach. In despair he flung in his sword—a surrender to the superior forces of nature. His military career was at an end.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Child
Related Symbols: The Toy Sword
Page Number: 45
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Child, The Mother
Page Number: 46
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Child, The Mother
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: Page 46
Explanation and Analysis: