Ignorance In Ambrose Bierce's Chickamauga
Thesis: In Ambrose Bierce’s “Chickamauga,” the deaf child depicts today’s society as individuals are ignorant during dark times because they are unaware of their surroundings until it affects them directly.
Topic Sentence: Through his use of simile, Bierce is able to display how innocent society acts in times of despair in the story by comparing the ignorance the world exemplifies to the boy’s inability to hear the situation which causes the readers to think of him as a very innocent child.
Textual Evidence:
Bierce captures the innocent boy’s awe as he sees his mother dead, with graphic detail:
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 . . . . Then he stood …show more content…
When the population of the world sees trouble emerge, most choose to be unable in helping other individuals who are in need. Likewise, the boy does not react when he sees the fire from afar, “The fire beyond the belt of woods on the farther side of the creek, reflected to earth from the canopy of its own smoke, was now suffusing the whole landscape. It transformed the sinuous line of mist to the vapor of gold. The water gleamed with dashes of red, and red, too, were many of the stones protruding above the surface. But that was blood;” (Bierce 3). Relative to modern society, the fire and blood represents the terror some human beings go through on a daily basis in their communities. The little boy does not think much of the blood or the fire when he sees it. Most people would do the same by acting innocent and deciding to be bystanders instead of being selfless and taking action for
Topic Sentence: Through his use of simile, Bierce is able to display how innocent society acts in times of despair in the story by comparing the ignorance the world exemplifies to the boy’s inability to hear the situation which causes the readers to think of him as a very innocent child.
Textual Evidence:
Bierce captures the innocent boy’s awe as he sees his mother dead, with graphic detail:
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 . . . . Then he stood …show more content…
When the population of the world sees trouble emerge, most choose to be unable in helping other individuals who are in need. Likewise, the boy does not react when he sees the fire from afar, “The fire beyond the belt of woods on the farther side of the creek, reflected to earth from the canopy of its own smoke, was now suffusing the whole landscape. It transformed the sinuous line of mist to the vapor of gold. The water gleamed with dashes of red, and red, too, were many of the stones protruding above the surface. But that was blood;” (Bierce 3). Relative to modern society, the fire and blood represents the terror some human beings go through on a daily basis in their communities. The little boy does not think much of the blood or the fire when he sees it. Most people would do the same by acting innocent and deciding to be bystanders instead of being selfless and taking action for