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The Father
The slaves owned by the child’s family are mentioned twice in the story. First, when the child is asleep in the woods, the narrator mentions that black and white men at the plantation home are searching the fields for the child. Second, when the child tries to ride the wounded soldiers like horses, the narrator comments that the child has done the same in the past with his father’s slaves for his own entertainment. The fact that the Civil War is being fought over slavery is not explicitly mentioned in the story, but this is background information that a reader in Bierce’s time would have probably been aware of. The fact that the boy tries to ride the slaves like horses but they still help search for him highlights the severity of the racial inequality at the time of the American Civil War, and further highlights the way that human society seems to be founded on the domination of one set of people by another, with most people giving little thought about the reality of that fact.
The Slaves Quotes in Chickamauga
The Chickamauga quotes below are all either spoken by The Slaves or refer to The Slaves. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chickamauga
Quotes
Somewhere far off was a strange, muffled thunder, as if the partridges were drumming in celebration of nature’s victory over the son of her immemorial enslavers. And back at the little plantation, where white men and black were hastily searching the fields and hedges in alarm, a mother’s heart was breaking for her missing child.
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Not all of this did the child note; it is what would have been noted by an elder observer; he saw little but that these were men, yet crept like babes. Being men, they were not terrible, though unfamiliarly clad. He moved among them freely, going from one to another and peering into their faces with childish curiosity. All their faces were singularly white and many were streaked and gouted with red. Something in this—something too, perhaps, in their grotesque attitudes and movements—reminded him of the painted clown whom he had seen last summer in the circus, and he laughed as he watched them. But on and ever on they crept, these maimed and bleeding men, as heedless as he of the dramatic contrast between his laughter and their own ghastly gravity. To him it was a merry spectacle. He had seen his father’s negroes creep upon their hands and knees for his amusement—had ridden them so, “making believe” they were horses. He now approached one of these crawling figures from behind and with an agile movement mounted it astride.
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The Slaves Quotes in Chickamauga
The Chickamauga quotes below are all either spoken by The Slaves or refer to The Slaves. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chickamauga
Quotes
Somewhere far off was a strange, muffled thunder, as if the partridges were drumming in celebration of nature’s victory over the son of her immemorial enslavers. And back at the little plantation, where white men and black were hastily searching the fields and hedges in alarm, a mother’s heart was breaking for her missing child.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Not all of this did the child note; it is what would have been noted by an elder observer; he saw little but that these were men, yet crept like babes. Being men, they were not terrible, though unfamiliarly clad. He moved among them freely, going from one to another and peering into their faces with childish curiosity. All their faces were singularly white and many were streaked and gouted with red. Something in this—something too, perhaps, in their grotesque attitudes and movements—reminded him of the painted clown whom he had seen last summer in the circus, and he laughed as he watched them. But on and ever on they crept, these maimed and bleeding men, as heedless as he of the dramatic contrast between his laughter and their own ghastly gravity. To him it was a merry spectacle. He had seen his father’s negroes creep upon their hands and knees for his amusement—had ridden them so, “making believe” they were horses. He now approached one of these crawling figures from behind and with an agile movement mounted it astride.
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