Why Does Bierce Use Of The Narrator In Chickamauga

Chickamauga

In the story Chickamauga Ambrose Bierce uses the narrator to tell the story through the eyes of the boy. The reader gets to know the protagonist through the narrator who the author uses to reveal some of the characters directly through disturbing details and others indirectly by describing the reaction of the character to certain situations. The boy in the story is the protagonist. The author introduces you to the boy in the begining of the story. Biecre lets you know the boy is young first by telling you he is a child of young age and second by describing the actions of the boy. Bierce tells us the boy was frightened by a rabbit, "Advancing from the bank of the creek, he suddenly found himself confronted with a new and more formidable enemy: in the path that he was following, bolt upright, with ears erect and paws suspended before it, sat a rabbit! With a startled cry the child turned and fled, he knew not in what direction, calling upon 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!" (126). Bierce shows us that the boy does not take war seriously, that it is more like a game to him.
As Bierce describes the soldiers he states, "Not all of this did the child note;" (127). Bierce describes the boys thoughts on the war victims as something from a circus, "Something too, perhaps, in their grotesque attitude and movements- reminded him of the painted clown whom he had seen last summer in the circus, and he laughed as he watched them. 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." (127). The boy compares the soldiers to his father's negroes, "He had seen his father's negroes creep upon their hands and knees for his amusement- had ridden them so, fancying them his horse. He now approached one of these crawling figures from behind and with an agile movement mounted it astride."
(127). The author reveals the main character in the beginning as a young foolish boy who does not fully understand what is happening around him. Bierce tells us, "He moved among them freely, going from one to another and peering into their faces with childish curiosity." (127). Bierce gives the reader indications throughout the story that the boy is deaf. Bierce says, "He rose to his knees, the child to his feet. The man shook his fist at the child: the child, terrified at last, ran to a tree near by, got upon the farther side of it and took a more serious view of the situation. And so the uncanny multitude dragged itself slowly and painfully along in hideous pantomime- moved foward down the slope like a swarm of great black beetles, with never a sound of going- in silence profound, absolute." (128). The boy sleeps through the battle without waking up, "The rustle and murmur of their march, had not awakened him. Almost within a stone's throw of where he lay they had fought a battle; but all unheard by him were the roar of the musketry, the shock of the cannon, "the thunder of the captains and the shouting," He had slept through it all," (128). In the end of the story Bierce says, "The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. 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. He was a deaf mute." (129). he author uses disturbing details to describe the soldiers. Bierce says, "They crept upon their hands and knees; they used their hands only, dragging their legs; they used their knees only, their arms hanging useless at their sides; they strove to rise to their feet, but fell prone in the attempt." (127). Bierce goes on to say, "The man sank upon his breast, recovered, flung the small body fiercely to the ground as an unbroken colt might have done, then turned upon him 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. The unnatural prominence of nose, the absence of chin, the fierce eyes, gave this man the appearance of a great bird of prey crimsoned in throat and breast by the blood of its quary," (127-128). The author lets the characters reveal themselves through the actions the narrator describes. Bierce also uses quite a bit of detail in the story to describe and reveal his characters, including the protagonist.