Figurative Language In Chickamauga Bierce

Within his short story, Chickamauga, Bierce is able to depict a realistic version of war and the devastation it creates through the application of imagery in his writing. The author administers imagery, which the literary diction defines as the use of “figurative language to represent objects, actions, and ideas in such a way that it appeals to our physical sense,” (LiteraryDevice Editors) in order to visually represent the gruesome reality of the culture at the time. More precisely, the ghastly illustration of the soldiers, behavior of the child, and comparisons of mankind to animalistic forms, add to the detail of the story and solidifies Bierce’s assertion that war is not glory, but destruction. In representing the story in such a way, Bierce illustrates how even the most innocent of creatures can enact cruelty by representing the little boy as the embodiment of both childish curiosity and ignorance. Portraying unpleasant things to tell the truth about war would assent with Dreiser 's theory that the job of the author is to “express what we see honestly and without subterfuge” (155). In this manner, Dreiser would approve of Bierce’s portrayal of war since it is realistic, and the figurative descriptions make the story more lifelike.
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The representation of the wounded soldier to that of an unbroken colt works to present both his natural dignity as well as savage nature. The soldier is operating against forces outside of his control, and the way in which he flings the small child to the ground shows his anger. Bierce then goes on to compare the man to a bird of prey, describing the “unnatural prominence of the nose, the absence of chin, the fierce eyes, (Lauter 457) in order to construct a more powerful image of the wounded