Bierce and Twain

Bierce's "Chickamauga" and Twain's "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed" are both compelling and alternative ways of showing the experiences of war. I personally loved "Chickamauga." The language Bierce uses and the point of view through which he tells his story drew me in right away. Using the innocence of this boy and his play sword seeing for the first time the terrors of wartime was deeply stirring. I found Bierce's detail and uncensored truth gripping. The most terrible, but best line (in my opinion) in "Chickamauga" was this:

"The man...turned upon [the boy] a face that lacked a lower jaw - from the upper teeth to the throat was a great red gap fringed with hanging shreds of flesh and splinters of bone" (127).

Twain's story, on the other hand, was funny. The scenes with the soldiers bickering and tumbling over each other in the wood showed just how unprepared they were for the military life. Like the innocence of the boy, these soldiers don't know what they're really doing and are risking their safety, constantly fleeing from Union soldiers rumored to be hovering their fleet. They never really knew how to handle a confrontation of that nature, despite the role they chose to take as soldiers. The old man at the house they retreated to chastising them shows just how little they knew of what they were doing:

"The old gentleman made himself very frank, and said we were a curious breed of soldiers, and guessed we could be depended on to end up the war in time...He wanted to know why we hadn't sent out a scouting party to spy out the enemy and bring us an account of his strength...before jumping up and stampeding out of a strong position upon a mere vague rumor" (100).

And in both stories, the main characters have a moment of somber realization of the danger they'd been in. The men in "The Private History" shoot a man who had no backup, no weapon, and they weep over their kill, even though in war, that's what any other soldier would have done. Similarly, the boy finds his mother shot in the head at the end of Bierce's story, and only then truly feels the severity of the happenings around him.

Both stories show a view of the Civil War unlike any other wartime story I've read. In fact, I grumbled to myself when I found out we had to read these stories. But when I realized they were so different, I was pleasantly surprised. Bierce and Twain used innocents for perspective. The average American - especially women and children and the affluent - would know nothing about fighting in the war, but neither did these characters. It was a way to open the eyes of the public through characters just like them. Killing a man and feeling the guilt of his death, and running into a swarm of mutilated, dead and dying bodies - those experiences would greatly affect any American just as it did the boy and fleet of soldiers.

The following lines are of (1) the moment with the soldiers shot dead the man on horseback, and (2) the moment when the boy finds his mother shot dead:

"The thought shot through me that I was a murderer; that I had killed a man - a man who had never done me any harm...[The boys] hung over him, full of pitying interest, and tried all they could to help him...I thought with a new despair, 'This thing that I have done does not end with him; it falls upon [his wife and child] too, and they had never did me any harm, any more than he" (Twain 104).

"There...lay the body of a woman...the long dark hair in tangles and full of clotted blood...The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries - a startling, soulless, unholy sound" (Bierce 129).