Assignment #2: Bierce and Irony

Both "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "Chickamauga" by Ambrose Bierce represent what readers today might refer to as classic realist literature from the post Civil War Era.The Civil War was brutal, and who could depict the futility and brutality of war better than Bierce, an author who suffered through it as a young man in the Union army? Something characteristic of these post-war authors was a new appreciation for irony, no doubt stemming from the wartime experience of being told what to do by commanding officers, but not being told why they were doing it, or when, or how and then experiencing a dramatic turn of events from seemingly out of nowhere, due to the withholding of information. In much the same way, Bierce withholds information from the reader in an attempt to turn the plot on it's head and shock the reader into a realization about war and it's consequences.

In "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", the entire part of the story stemming from Peyton falling into the river and reaching home is a fabrication, as it is revealed that he actually died hanging from the railroad tracks. As a realist, Bierce detested the romantics of the previous age as liars, because for him they did not tell the story of life as it actually was. In utilizing irony in Peyton Farquhar's story, he attempts to shock the public back to reality, and away from their romantic dreams. The way in which he ends the story is a stark contrast to the proceeding paragraphs. As he was approaching his wife at the gates of their home, after he improbably escaped from the jaws of death at multiple moments, Bierce strikes his readers with a simple sentence, "Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck. swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek Bridge". He ends his tale with brusqueness and efficiency of the soldiers who ended Peyton's. 

In "Chickamauga", Bierce once again utilizes irony to strike out at a public who he believed shared an unrealistic perception of war, as does the boy of the story. While the story is set in small southern plantation/forest, it is clear to me that the story is a metaphor for the public and war. The public is the young boy, happily gallivanting through the forest of both trees and copy machines. The public has the same perception of war as the young boy, it is an exercise, it's an event; It's something to get excited over, as the boy get's excited by striking at imaginary foes with his wooden sword. The dead soldiers represent misfortune and death, but the misfortune and death of people who do not directly affect you. If the boy is the general public, Bierce could be saying that the public mourns their side's dead only superficially. He shows this by the boys next actions. The boy takes on the role of a general, leading the crawling mass towards the red glow in the distance, he adores the red glow and the fire it represents, he even feeds it with his wooden sword which stands as a symbol for the disgust of war and also of the public's incessant need to fuel the flames of war. Only when the boy realizes when it is his own home and his own dead does the gravity of the situation strike him. It is only when we are confronted with the horrors of war do we truly understand the weight of war.

Irony is important for Bierce and authors like him because it gives them an avenue to express their bitterness and disgust, without directly accusing the public and allowing for a story to take place and flow.