The Jiliting of Granny Weatherall

Think, when you were a child you probably were mistaken for many things, I know I was. When I was a young boy I thought that chores were a great thing because it always made my mom happy. When my mom was happy I got happy. When I grew older I found out that chores weren’t the best thing but they can help you later on in life. The same idea is in this story but it doesn’t have to do with work. This is about a boy and his idea about war.

The major theme in this story is his teachings from his father were inaccurate in which lead him to believe that war was a great thing. “In his younger manhood the father had been a solider, had fought against naked savages and followed the flag of his country into the capital of a civilized race to the far South” (Bierce 1). H The boy’s father had been in many wars and has lots of photographs from all of them. “The man loved military books and pictures and the boy understood enough to make himself a wooden sward, though even the eye of his father would hardly have known it for what it was” (Bierce 1). The boy is a deaf mute which means he cannot hear or talk. He is only able to see. He father shows him a lot of the pictures and metals that he had earned form the wars. The boy gets the wrong interpretation of what his dad is trying to explain to him. He thinks that war is a great thing, but it’s not, and he does not understand that many people die in wars and that his father is lucky to survive. Another quote that explains this theme is. “Made reckless by the ease with which he overcame invisible foes attempting to stay his advance, he committed the common enough military error of pushing the pursuit to a dangerous extreme, until he found himself upon the margin of a wide but shadow brook, whose rapid waters barred his direct advance against the flying foe that had crossed with illogical ease” (Bierce 1).

Imagery is used throughout the whole story. When the boy’s father is showing him the pictures you can picture...