Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

STUDIES - M. Thomas Inge: Sam Watkins and the Fictionality of Fact

Men were laying where they fell, shot in every conceivable part of the body. Some with their entrails torn out and still hanging to them and piled upon the ground beside them, and they still alive. Some with their undeijaw torn off, and hanging by a fragment of skin to their cheeks, with their tongues lolling from their mouths, and they trying to talk (W, 97). The difference here, of course, is that Bierce has couched his scene of horror within the comfortable context of a piece of fiction, even though the rude juxtaposition of a young child witnessing this offers its own unsettling contrast. Watkins gives us his view exactly as he witnessed it, and we are both repelled and attracted by the sight as we are by a photograph of a mutilation from which we are unable to divert our eyes. Bierce, of course, witnessed Chickamauga from the position of a topographical officer on the sidelines, while Watkins was there on the field participating in the bloodshed. For those who know this, it lends an element of authenticity to Watkins, but in any case, his passage is at least equally compelling and powerful. It could be argued too that Bierce's use of a child is rather contrived and appeals too strongly to the sentimental side of the reader, while Watkins resorts to no easy emotion other than unadulterated horror. The great American fictional classic of the Civil War is, of course, The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, written in 1893 and published in 1895 and based only on extensive reading in books about the war. There are so many parallels between "Co. Aytch

' and The Red Badge that I suspect Watkins's book must have been among those read by the young author born six years after the war was over. I will suggest only a few. Like the fictional Henry Fleming in Crane's novel, Sam Watkins as yet unitiated in battle also feels envy for those who have encountered "war, the blood swollen god"

7 and wear their wounds proudly: 7 Stephen Crane, The Red Budge of Couruge, hereafter abbreviated as RB, Crane, Prose and Poetry (New York: Library of America, 1984) 103. 53