The existentialism of Ambrose Bierce: A study of memory in American postbellum literature

Ambrose Bierce was an American Civil War combat veteran, journalist, satirist, fiction author, political analyst, and general malcontent of the late nineteenth century. At a time when most Americans were content to willingly gloss over the brutality of the Civil War, Bierce brought it back unapologetically in his writing. Most Americans during this era sought to reconcile the North and South on the basis of soldierly valor and white racial superiority while eschewing its unprecedented violence. Bierce's short stories—in remarkably existential fashion—subverted the conventional Victorian sensibilities of the era and forced the reader to question the war in an entirely new way.;This study makes the argument that Ambrose Bierce, through these stories, exemplified and anticipated a kind literary American existentialism more recognizable from post World War II Europe. In contextualizing Bierce's writings in the late nineteenth century, this study also investigates the nature of public memory concerning the Civil War. What did Americans make a point of remembering about the war? What did they forget? Why was Bierce's memory of the war so at odds with the general public? In order to get at these questions, this paper examines the way in which Americans "managed" their memory of Civil War, as well as how Bierce's writings are historically situated with other prominent Americans writing on the Civil War.