“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 himself but also the entire cultural tradition that the boy has inherited—as viewing nature as a rival, something to be overcome and conquered, just as we view other groups of humans as something to be conquered. But the story implies that humans are in fact a part of nature, and so humanity’s struggle against nature is doomed to fail.
“Chickamauga” describes mankind as seeking to conquer nature, and connects this war against nature with fantasies of war as noble and bringing civilization to what was once “savage.” When the boy in the story goes to play war, he doesn’t stay around his house. He goes to the forest, connecting war with a desire to tame “wild” places. He then imagines himself battling the obstacles of the forest, forging a “shallow brook, whose rapid waters barred his direct advance.” The boy sees nature as an enemy, to humorous effect when he encounters a rabbit and thinks it as a monstrous foe. After getting lost, he is terrified by the forest he had just imagined himself conquering. The boy always sees himself in conflict with nature, whether winning or losing.
The story connects the boy’s ideas about overcoming nature to his society’s: “this child’s spirit, in bodies of its ancestors, had for thousands of years been trained to memorable feats of discovery and conquest.” Those ancestors had “conquered [their] way through two continents,” a phrase that describes overcoming both other people within that land and the land itself. The boy’s love of war stems most directly from his father, who fought people he thinks of as “naked savages.” In this way, the story indicates that the fantasies of glorious war treasured by the boy, his father, and his ancestors is driven by an idea that they are fighting on the side of civilization against savagery, of humanity against nature, with an implication that humans often justify wars against other humans by imagining those other humans as “savages,” as being more a part of nature than of humanity. This idea is amplified by the fact that the boy’s Southern family owns slaves that the boy sometimes “rides” for fun—his own family justifies its domination of other humans by treating them like animals. Human war also harms nature directly in the story: soldiers battle in the forest, littering it with dead bodies and broken guns, staining its stream and stones with blood, and lighting it on fire. This suggests that humans defile nature by using it as a backdrop for our own battle, making nature into a casualty of our battles.
Even as “Chickamauga” shows how humans see themselves as being in conflict with nature, the story constantly blurs the boundaries between humans and nature, and suggests that humans are a part of nature. When the boy wakes after becoming lost in the forest and sees the wounded soldiers all around him, he first thinks they are animals—dogs, pigs, or maybe bears. A bit later, the narrator describes these soldiers as seeking to escape their “hunters,” using language to make clear a connection between war (men hunting men) with man’s war against nature (men hunting animals). When the boy falls asleep in the forest, the story treats him as just another part of the forest, with birds and squirrels chittering around his human form. At the same time, the story suggests that nature will not bear human attacks against it without response, as it connects the sounds of the battle that the boy is sleeping through to partridges squawking “in celebration of nature’s victory over the son of her immemorial enslavers.” (This reference to humanity’s “enslavement” of nature can also be seen as a reminder that the Civil War is being fought over humanity’s enslavement of its own species.)
By making clear that humanity is not distinct from nature, the story suggests that humanity’s attempts to conquer nature will naturally end in disaster. Near the end of the story, the boy comes upon a fire. He’s delighted by its destructive power—“he danced with glee in imitation of the wavering flames.” The boy wants to contribute to the fire, to aid its destruction. He throws in his toy wooden sword, which the narrator describes as “a surrender to the superior forces of nature.” Immediately after, the boy discovers that the fire has destroyed his family’s home, and that his parents have been killed. The death of the boy’s mother and the fire’s destruction of his home are literal manifestations of nature’s triumph over humanity. These events are a direct result of humanity’s Civil War battle, certainly, but they also result from the unavoidable facts of nature: fire spreads, and some wounds to the body are mortal. In this way the story suggests that in seeking to conquer other humans and nature (which the story has made clear is in fact the same instinct), humans step outside the normal order of nature and in so doing create outsize reactions: more war, more killing, and nature itself burning out of control. When the boy discovers his dead mother, he utters “a series of inarticulate cries—something between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey.” The boy in his grief is like the animals he earlier thought himself to be above, implying that despite human’s self-conception as civilized conquerors of the “savage” (whether other people or nature itself), humans are in fact a part of nature. Mankind’s efforts to conquer nature will therefore inevitably end in disaster, because any such war against nature is in fact a war against itself.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Humanity vs. Nature ThemeTracker
Humanity vs. Nature Quotes in Chickamauga
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
