Chicka whata?

Good art relates. Or so I have been told; or is that thought a culmination of experiences and my own devise? Literature, as a form of art, would as it's purpose effort relating the audience with the message (words)

Bierce's Chickamauga, rife with potent and at times graphic imagery speaks directly to humans from North South West (United States post Civil War). The young boy presented a youthful innocence that was to be educated. Loss of innocence. Loss of home. loss of family. loss of self.... What the boy loses, the ready gains, in compassion empathy and understanding for someone else that experienced a life altering event.


Ok, that is the most obvious interpretation to the work. I would propose for comment, condemnation or simply derision the following. The boy represents not just childhood wonder and innocence, but rather the boy represents the South.


“freedom from control” (a free South independent from concerns and controls of the remainder of the nation.)

The first paragraph goes on to speculate about the boys ancestors,  that proud southern heritage, even snippets of French accents  prevalent to this day. “in bodies of its ancestors, had for thousands of years been trained to memorable feats of discovery and conquest.”  Goes on to speak of triumphing over the natives of the land.

Speaks about how the South perhaps went to far in the conflict against the North predicating it’s own doom. “military error of pushing the pursuit to a dangerous extreme”, this was referring to the boy crossing the creek (boundaries…? Were the philosophical or actual boundaries?)

“could not curb the lust for war”….. By portraying the South an innocent with a warrior spirit, ignorant of the follies of war, Bierce writes onward about the horrors created by such a mindset, indicating that the South would lose favored status by pursuing such a plan. “Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest star”

Finding that poets and visual artists find success in couching relationships for the reader/viewer inside someone or something that the viewer relates to on a subconscious level rather than risk obtusely revealing too much too soon about the underlying message.