Chickamauga

There is considerable irony in this story, although of a dark and ghoulish kind. The irony can be seen in both the tone and the situation of the story. At the story’s beginning, for example, there is an obvious intended ironic contrast between the boy’s play-fighting and the solemn and commemorative way in which this imaginary fighting is described: “But the intrepid victor was not to be baffled; the spirit of the race which had passed the great sea burned unconquerable in that small breast and would not be denied” (Paragraph 2). The inflatedness of this language is later ironically undermined by the boy’s being frightened by a rabbit: a creature as helpless as he is.

These small ironies pave the way for the darker irony at the heart of the story. This is that the boy, in setting out on an imaginary heroic quest, only ends up lost and helpless; the greater part of his quest involves finding his way back home, which he then finds that he has participated in destroying. The story further suggests that this irony is not unique to the boy’s situation, but is at the root of war in general.