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"Chickamauga"
Short story by Ambrose Bierce
Illustration depicting the Battle of Chickamauga. Library Company of Philadelphia, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	War | Historical Fiction | Short Story
Publication
Publisher	The San Francisco Examiner
Media type	Print (Newspaper)
Publication date	January 20th 1889

Chickamauga (short story)

“Chickamauga” is a short story by the American author Ambrose Bierce. It is set in northern Georgia in Walker County, where the Battle of Chickamauga took place. It was written in 1889 and derives from Bierce’s experience as a soldier during the American Civil War.

Plot Summary

A young boy, around the age of six, wanders alone into the woods on an autumn afternoon with a toy sword, all the while pretending to be in battle. His father, having been a soldier, had raised him on heroic stories of war. The boy crosses a creek and encounters a rabbit, which startles him. Afraid, he runs away crying for his mother and ends up becoming lost in the woods. Exhausted and afraid, the boy lays down with his toy sword and falls asleep. A few hours later, the boy wakes up and tries to make his way back out of the woods. However, the mist over the creek he had crossed earlier frightens him and he turns to head back into the woods. When he turns, he sees at first one, but then hundreds of men struggling on hands and knees towards the creek, moving unnaturally. The boy inspects the men’s faces, finding them bloodied and injured, to which he laughs, being reminded of the way his family’s servants would entertain him. The boy tries to crawl on top of one of them to pretend he is a horse, the way he would with his father’s servants. The man shakes him off and, seeing his disfigured face, the boy ran away to watch the soldiers move from a farther distance. Light begins to shine upon the scene, and seeing this, the boy runs to the front of the mob, leading them as their commander. They march toward a fire in the distance, passing the carnage left from the battle waged as the child had slept. They approach the fire, which the child attempts to fuel further, but cannot lift what he wants to throw in, so he throws his sword in instead. The boy then looks beyond the fire, recognizing the burning plantation as his home. He sees a woman’s body lying in the grass, and approaches, recognizing her. She had been killed by an artillery shell. The boy begins to cry and yell, but can only make unrecognizable, inarticulate sounds; it is revealed that he is deaf and mute. He continues to stand there, staring at the destruction.

Publication History

“Chickamauga” was originally written by Bierce for the San Francisco Examiner on January 20^th, 1889. It was popularized by its 1891 publication in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians.

The first edition title page of Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, a compilation of short stories by Ambrose Bierce, in which "Chickamauga" was also published.

Analysis

Though classified as a war story, “Chickamauga” offers a unique perspective; it is told through the eyes of a deaf-mute 6-year-old that is almost certainly too young to understand the reality of war. Scholars agree that this is to defamiliarize the audience and force them to see the devastation of war from an innocent perspective. Without prior knowledge, most people would not expect “Chickamauga” to be a war story. The setting and the character do not allow readers to prepare for the horror that is coming.

It begins with a child playing like a soldier, fighting an imaginary battle. The characterization of the boy is important to understanding the story. When it is finally revealed that the boy is deaf and mute, therefore making him even more innocent and unaware as previously thought. Viewing the events of the story through the boy's eyes allows readers to be caught off guard later in the short story.

After exhausting himself, he crosses a lake, where he is then startled by a rabbit. The rabbit symbolizes the boy's innocence, as something regarded as non-frightening was able to scare him. The boy then lays down and sleeps, effectively tuning the reader out of the world in which the events are happening. When he wakes up, something strange with the wood is happening. The fog that frightens the boy symbolizes the difficulty he has in clearly seeing the situation, but he is soon face with the horrors anyway. His innocence is once again emphasized in the scene with the soldiers that are seen crawling through the woods. The boy believes it to be a chance to have fun and ride on their backs, like he does the servants at home. After seeing their injured and bloodied faces and bodies, however, he runs to watch from a distance. At first it is difficult to comprehend what this scene is communicating because of the perspective, but this is done so purposely. It is to show that the main character is too young to understand what is happening.

After seizing his chance to "lead" an army, the boy marches to a fire. At first, he does not recognize the place, and throws his sword into the fire. Then, upon further inspection, the boy realizes that it is his home that is on fire. Throwing his sword into the burning of his own home symbolizes the loss of innocence at the end of the story. The boy now realizes what has happened, and what he has seen.

Overall, "Chickamauga" represents the devastations of war, and the great losses that soldiers and civilians suffer as a result. The loss of innocence and life is portrayed throughout the story, allowing readers to understand the horrors that came from the battle.

Inspiration

Bierce wrote “Chickamauga” based off of his own experiences as a soldier, which is reflected in much of his writing. The descriptions and imagery throughout the story attest to this, as it is extremely vivid. Bierce spent much of his life revisiting the locations of the Civil War battles in which he fought. It is based on the historical Battle of Chickamauga, in which Bierce fought.

See Also

• Chickamauga, a city in northern Georgia.
• The historical Battle of Chickamauga, on which the story is based.  
• The Chickamauga campaign, a series of Civil War battles taking place in northern Georgia.
• 20th Century American novelist Thomas Wolfe has a short story titled 1937 “Chickamauga”.
• The band Uncle Tupelo has a song titled “Chickamauga” on their 1993 album Anodyne.
• French director Robert Enrico directed a 1962 short film titled “Chickamauga,” an adaptation of the short story by Ambrose Bierce.