The article considers the martial theme in Ambrose Bierce’s Civil War novels. With the help of historical, systematic, and comparative methods of research as well as content analysis, the author attempts to determine how the writer depicts the war, what his attitude to the conflict between the North and the South is, and how his war experience relates to his creative work. She focuses on two Civil War stories “What I Saw of Shilohˮ (1881) and “Killed at Resacaˮ (1887), paying special attention to connections between those texts. Bierce wrote about the war events in which he participated. He was not looking for fame and had no intention to glorify the military actions or combatants. Bierce’s Civil War stories are based on literary paradox and the principle of contradiction. Routine situations, in which his characters find themselves, always turn into something extraordinary. “What I Saw of Shilohˮ has a special place among Bierce’s war stories, since here he incorporates literary devices into a factual narrative, employing topographic accuracy in battle description, hyperorality in reporting deaths, and a clearly ironic approach to senseless heroism. Horror, fear, and death feature as key motifs in the writer’s creative work. Bierce wants the reader to remember the war without waxing nostalgic about the glorious past: his officers in white uniforms on white horses die in ugly ways, and those whom they loved quickly forget them (“Killed at Resacaˮ). By employing the illogical and irrational in his stories, Bierce compels the reader to decry the illogicality and irrationality of war.
THE IMAGE OF THE CIVIL WAR IN “TALES OF SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS” BY AMBROSE BIERCE
