An Affair Of Outpost: Volume 2 By Ambrose Bierce

Kassey Benton
Period 6
Term Paper. In The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce: Volume 2 by Ambrose Bierce, the author explains to the reader the adjustment a soldier has to make when dealing with war, by showing the way their lives have changed, the tolls it takes on the families they are leaving behind, and the physiological effect of the war. Ambrose Bierce demonstrates the adjustment a soldier has to make by explaining their life before the war and what it was like during the war. Most of the soldiers are used to a normal life, so having their life in danger everywhere they go and every move they make is something they are defiantly not used to. Bierce shows this type of adjustment in several different ways. In the story A Horseman
When he woke, he noticed that someone had been watching him so he acted as if he had been shot. He grew very pale and every limb on his body shook. His life had never been in true danger before and Bierce captured every little detail of his fear to enhance the way the reader felt about him. Bierce included this story in his book to show that soldiers come from all different backgrounds and they can change for the better when it comes to protecting their country. Another way Bierce shows the transition is in the short story An Affair of Outpost: Section 1. Concerning the wish to be dead (pg.32). In this short story the governor is reviewing an application to join military commission, the young man applying was a southern and at the time the north and the south didn’t get along. The governor rejects his application because he doesn’t believe that he is finished with his ways of the South and doesn’t want to take the chance of this young man betraying the North and telling the South all their secrets. So, in order to persuade the governor to change his mind the young man tells him, “While my sympathies are with the
Bierce includes different types of physiological events into his stories. In the short story, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (pg.6), a man is being hung. His face wasn’t covered, nor had his eyes been bandaged. Before it was time for the captain’s to remove the boards from out from under his feet, he started to picture his wife and children. Having that one last happy thought before his life was over would give him a sense of peace and a sense of happiness before he left the world for good. Bierce intended for this story to hit a soft spot in the reader’s heart and maybe change the way they looked at war. When faced with a traumatic event, your emotions can take over your entire thought process and body. That’s what happened to this man, right before his death, and that’s what Bierce was trying to