Beginning of Essay
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 Fra ....

Middle of Essay
.... The perspective in which the story is written is used to manipulate the reader's viewpoint, for example in "Chickamauga", where a bloody battlefield is seen 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 ....