Bierce
Serving as a union soldier in the Civil War,
learned of war' s savageness, and how stupid and degrading
it was. His writing style can be contributed to his war
time experiences. His works are blunt, brutally realistic,
and his attacks on others in the San Francisco Examiner,
(American Authors 1600-1900 76) were nowhere near
politically correct. 's short stories "often hinge on
an ironic surprising conclusion" (Contemporary Authors 48),
as in one of his better known works "An Occurrence At Owl
Creek Bridge", were the sudden death of a Confederate spy
catches us by surprise. A forerunner of the realist
movement, Ambrose Bierce's cynical views of live and human
existence ...
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through
the eyes of a deaf child(Short Story Criticism 48), or in
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", where a man about to be
hanged for treason, dreams of his escape. Bierce's often
ironic twists leave the reader stunned. As noted by Alfred
Kazin, "There is invariably a sudden reversal, usually in a
few lines near the end, that takes the story away from the
reader, as it were, that overthrows his confidence in the
nature of what he has been reading, that indeed overthrows
his confidence" (Short Story Criticism 49). For all of
this, why is Bierce considered a realist? Bierce, unlike
any other short story author before him, was not romantic
with his war depictions. He painted in our mind, its
gruesomeness, its wastefulness. Bierce's stories depict
soldiers "as bewildered fools, doing things without sense,
submitting to torture and outrage without resistance, dying
at last like hogs"(Discovering Authors Mencken, H.L.).
Nonetheless, as stated by ...
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Bierce. (2007, July 28). Retrieved April 25, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Bierce/68697
"Bierce." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 28 Jul. 2007. Web. 25 Apr. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Bierce/68697>
"Bierce." Essayworld.com. July 28, 2007. Accessed April 25, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Bierce/68697.
"Bierce." Essayworld.com. July 28, 2007. Accessed April 25, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Bierce/68697.
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