“Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him (Bierce 1-2).” Death was ultimately present throughout much of both short stories, his sudden and striking hand took the life of many during the Civil War. Each moment of battle was soiled with sweat, blood, and tears of the soldiers. The bodies of fathers, brothers, and friends littered the battlefield, and often the death passed over members closer to home. Not only were those whose lives were lost affected, but the families of the brave men were affected devastatingly as well. The author Mark Twain approached the suddenness of death in his story “A Private History of a Campaign that Failed”. Ambrose Bierce also captured the sharp essence of death in his tale of Peyton Farquhar in “An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge”. Ambrose Bierce displays the theme of “the suddenness of death” with such a clarity even though it does not truly appear until the very last sentence of his short story. His distortion of reality is not realized until readers have fought alongside and cheered for the main protagonist Farquhar. In the first section it is learned that a man is scheduled to be executed, fleeting moments of longing for his wife and children flash through his mind. In one sudden moment the words “The sergeant stepped aside (Bierce 2)” are read. The weight of the sergeant being the only thing holding him onto life for a brief second more. In this second between life and death, Farquhar remembers the moment that led him to the noose. A simple and caring gesture for a soldier supposedly of his own Confederacy was tinged with betrayal, it had sold him to Death and there was no escape from... ... middle of paper ... ...mselves after killing their brothers? Not always were they brothers of blood, but they were all brothers of one nation before the succession. The number of men whose lives were lost were brutal and fast, even the deaths that were drawn out had a sense of quickness. Each man, woman, and child who died during the war had that sudden moment when their last breath left their fragile body. Works Cited Bierce, Ambrose. "An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge. Fiction: The Server Collection. Web. 12 Dec 2013 http://fiction.eserver.org/short/occurrence_at_owl_creek.html. Greenberg, Amy S. "This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War." Civil War History (2009): 82-84. Book Review. Twain, Mark. "A Private History of a Campaign that Failed". Short Stories. East of the Web. 2011. Web. 12 Dec 2013. http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/PriHis.shtml
James Baldwin had a talent of being able to tell a personal story and relate it to world events. His analysis is a rare capability that one can only acquire over an extensive lifetime. James Baldwin not only has that ability, but also the ability to write as if he is conversing with the reader. One of his most famous essays, “Notes of a Native Son,” is about his father’s death. It includes the events that happened prior to and following his father’s death. Throughout this essay, he brings his audience into the time in which he wrote and explains what is going on by portraying the senses and emotions of not only himself, but as well as the people involved. This essay has a very personal feeling mixed with public views. Baldwin is able to take one small event or idea and shows its place within the “bigger picture.” Not only does he illustrate public experiences, but he will also give his own personal opinion about those events. Throughout “Notes of a Native Son” Baldwin uses the binary of life versus death to expand on the private versus public binary that he also creates. These two binaries show up several times together showing how much they relate to each other.
Setting in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is a mutable component and known as one of the most imperative indicators in the text to direct the reader towards how it should be perceived and what is happening. Based during the Civil War the environment was set in occupied Federal Army territory where, “a lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right.” (Bierce 399). The function of time in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" both creates positives and negatives that define the story as realist that describes moments with genuine detail, taking many paragraphs to relate a single second. Such as the moment, “ [Farquhar] looked a moment his “unsteadfast foot,” then let
Turner, Thomas R. 101 Things You Didn’t Know about the Civil War. Avon: Adams, 2007.
Heidler, David Stephen, and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds. Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: a
There are many different ways in which the war was represented to the public, including drawings, newspaper articles, and detailed stereographs. Stereographs such as John Reekie’s “The Burial Party” invoked mixed feelings from all of those who viewed it. It confronts the deaths caused by the Civil War as well as touches upon the controversial issue over what would happen to the slaves once they had been emancipated. This picture represents the Civil War as a trade-off of lives- fallen soldiers gave their lives so that enslaved black men and women could be given back their own, even if that life wasn’t that different from slavery. In his carefully constructed stereograph “The Burial Party,” John Reekie confronts the uncertainty behind the newly
Margaret Mitchell once said: “They knew that love snatched in the face of danger and death was doubly sweet for the strange excitement that went with it.” The Civil war was a trying time for the American people, whether they were on the battlefield or at home. Although the name is quite deceiving, there was nothing civil about this war.I was fought with the violence and brutality that would define a century. Abraham Lincoln and Robert Lee take interesting stances on their Civil War texts Gettysburg Address and Lee’s Letter to His Son.
McPherson, James M.; The Atlas of the Civil War. Macmillan: 15 Columbus Circle New York, NY. 1994.
“...Put your pistol to your head and go to Fiddlers’ Green.” Throughout literary history, epic stories of heroes dying for their gods and their countries have called men to battle and romanticized death, but Langston Hughes approaches the subject in a different way. He addresses death as a concept throughout much of his work. From his allusions to the inevitability of death to his thoughts on the inherent injustice in death, the concept of human mortality is well addressed within his works. In Hughes’ classic work, “Poem to a Dead Soldier,” he describes death in quite unflattering terms as he profusely apologizes to a soldier sent to fight and die for his country.
Simpson, Brooks D., Stephen W. Sears, and Aaron Sheehan-Dean, eds. The Civil War: Told by Those Who Lived It. New York: The Library of America, 2011. Print.
The Crisis of the American Republic: A History of the Civil War Era, Guelzo, Allen; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995 Print
It is inevitable when dealing regularly with a subject as brutal as war, that death will occur. Death brings grief for the victim’s loved ones, which William Faulkner depicts accurately and fairly in many of his works, including the short story “Shall Not Perish” and The Unvanquished. While the works differ because of the time (The Unvanquished deals with the Civil War while “Shall Not Perish” takes place during World War II) and the loved ones grieving (The Unvanquished shows the grief of a lover and “Shall Not Perish” shows the grief of families), the pain they all feel is the same.
The film “Death and the Civil War” discusses how death was dealt with during the civil war with regards to men died and what this meant for America as a whole. The Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 9, 1865) is the war of the Union against the Confederate States of America and it resulted in the United States of America changing its view of death. The Civil War was “the first modern war, the first mass war of the modern age” and before this war “there were no national cemeteries in America” (“American Experience”). This film is quite effective in it’s presenting of the information because of the following reasons: it taught me new information, helped me understand history better, and the film had more effective aspects rather than ineffective ones.
Catton, Bruce. The American Heritage New History of The Civil War. New York New York, Penguin Group Penguin Books USA Inc. 1988
In the short story “A Rose for Emily” death plays a major role in developing the story. It also shows how the death of one person can change a city as a whole. However, if you compare this story to the life of the author, William Faulkner, you can see how death in his life can contribute to why he wrote the story the way he did. The death of the people is used to add to the meaning of the work altogether. William Faulkner’s experiences add meaning to his work, “A Rose for Emily,” through several deaths and Emily’s ultimate demise.
The American Civil war is considered to be one of the most defining moments in American history. It is the war that shaped the social, political and economic structure with a broader prospect of unifying the states and hence leading to this ideal nation of unified states as it is today. In the book “Confederates in the Attic”, the author Tony Horwitz gives an account of his year long exploration through the places where the U.S. Civil War was fought. He took his childhood interest in the Civil War to a new level by traveling around the South in search of Civil War relics, battle fields, and most importantly stories. The title “Confederates in the Attic”: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War carries two meanings in Tony Horwitz’s thoughtful and entertaining exploration of the role of the American Civil War in the modern world of the South. The first meaning alludes to Horwitz’s personal interest in the war. As the grandson of a Russian Jew, Horwitz was raised in the North but early in his childhood developed a fascination with the South’s myth and history. He tells readers that as a child he wrote about the war and even constructed a mural of significant battles in the attic of his own home. The second meaning refers to regional memory, the importance or lack thereof yet attached to this momentous national event. As Horwitz visits the sites throughout the South, he encounters unreconstructed rebels who still hold to outdated beliefs. He also meets groups of “re-enactors,” devotees who attempt to relive the experience of the soldier’s life and death. One of his most disheartening and yet unsurprising realizations is that attitudes towards the war divide along racial lines. Too many whites wrap the memory in nostalgia, refusing...