Chickamauga is short story by Ambrose Bierce that takes place in
             1863 during the American Civil War. It is an anti-war narrative that also
             speaks to the evolution of humans in battle. A young child, the son of a
             veteran is the central character. Having grown up around war and being born
             of a soldier the child shows insensitivity to wounded men that few could
             understand. Not only insensitive to the setting, the child makes a game of
             the situation at hand. At the end of this short story, both the reader and
             the child are shown the true gravity of this tale.
             On an apparent typical afternoon, in the setting of this story, a
             young child wanders from his home playing games. After being frighten by a
             rabbit the child takes a nap and wakes to what seems a dream, to the reader
             unfamiliar with the back drop of this story. In the goriest detail the
             child happens upon what he thinks are animals. Shortly after, it becomes
             evident these "animals" are retreating, wounded soldiers. Both desensitized
             and unaware of the seriousness of what he's found, the soldiers become
             pawns in the child's game. Ironically the child pretends to be a General
             leading his troops to battle. Eventually and unaware, the child followed by
             his "troops" find their way back to his home only to find it torched and
             his mother killed outside of it. Finally the reader is made aware that the
             More than a century later, Chickamauga is still the subject of deep
             analysis. One such analysis was done by James Baltrum in "Bierce aboard the
             Beagle: Darwinian Discourse and Chickamauga." (2009) Baltrum claims that
             "Chickamauga" is much more than "an allegorical progression from youthful
             innocence to adult experience or a socially conscious antiwar narrative"
             (227). It is a statement about both the good and bad effects of Darwin's
             theory of evolution (Bierce 227). While Bierce is a supporter of Darwinism
             and thought of him highly he acknowl...