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IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD: HEBRAIC INTERTEXTUALITY
AND CRITICAL INQUIRY OF AMBROSE BIERCE
THESIS
Presented to the Graduate Council of the
University of North Texas in Partial
Fulfillment
of the Requirements
For the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
By
Rodney L. Streng, B. J.
Denton, Texas
August, 1990
Rik
Streng, Rodney L., In the Beginning Was the Word:
Intertextuality
and Critical Inquiry of Ambrose
(American Literature), August, 1990,
This
study
corroborates
Hebraic
Master of Arts
Bierce.
111 pp., 1 diagram, bibliography, 43 titles.
theories
that ordinary
representation
of
narrative time as a linear series of "nows" hides the true constitution of time
and that it is advantageous for us as readers and critics to consider alternatives
to progressive reality and linear discourse in order to comprehend many of
Ambrose Bierce's stories, for his discourse is fluid and metonymic and defies
explication within traditional
of intertextuality
encourages
western
limitless
language concepts.
considerations
The Hebraic theory
in textual
analysis
language is perceived as a creative and dynamic force, not merely mimetic.
such it offers a means for reconsideration
of fundamental theories
concerning the natures of language and time in Bierce's stories.
since
As
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter I
Chapter
Chapter
II
III
Postmodern Readings ........................................
Time in the Many Different Worlds
Past, Present, Future:
of Ambrose Bierce .........................................
Backtracking:
Two Languages, Two Heritages ................
1
16
38
Chapter IV
Ambrose Bierce and Traditional Hebraic Intertextuality . . . . . . . 61
Chapter V
The Essence of
Backtracking and Pressing Onward:
Postmodernism and Hebraic Intertextuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
iii
TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS, CHARTS, AND DIAGRAMS
Diagram 3:1..........................................................50
IV
CHAPTER I
POSTMODERN READINGS: THE NATURE OF HEBRAIC INTERTEXTUALITY
Calling criticism a "religious war"
hermeneutics
finds
its
heritage
and pointing out that modem
in Biblical
hermeneutics,
Susan
declares that modern literary criticism is "a kind of substitute
Handelman
theology"
(xiii).
Today critics find themselves in the wake of the overthrow of the "New Critical
Gospel of formalism" so prevalent during the 1930s and 1940s (Handelman
179).
The "Book of 'Books" is no longer perceived as divine; the critical "Text" has
supplanted it.
Without absolutes, critics enjoy their freedom to create "a
variety of ideologies, sects, and systems whose true believers battle out their
quasi-religious
wars"
xiii).
(Handelman
What Handelman calls a religious war may stem from a misconception
about the nature of narrative and what comprises a text.
Barbara Herrnstein
Smith points out that as refined as contemporary narrative theory may be, it
seems to suffer from what she identifies as "a number of dualistic concepts and
of which betrays a lingering strain of
models, the continuous generation
naive Platonism and the continued appeal to which is both logically dubious
and methodologically
distracting"
Handelman says that rigid
(209).
structuralism rests on "a Hellenistic
dream of logic, order,
form, and lucidity,"
a dream which she says fails to recognize the elusive quality of narrative and
the text (180).
misconceived.
Herrnstein Smith also believes that narrative and the text are
She rejects the traditional two-leveled
in which a "story" contains the content of a narrative
1
model of narrative, that
and a "discourse"
2
communicates
that would
narrative
it.
She suggests instead that that model be replaced with one
allow narratologists
as
something
other than
objects, events, or ideas" (222).
conformity
narrative
as
or formal
and
"functions
of these
narratologists
perceive
Her understanding
addressed
"representations
of
of any individual
specific,
discrete
To do so would prevent the "expectation of a
correspondence
anything else"
formal properties
to regard
between
(Herrnstein
Smith
multiple interacting
as the rigid and
any of the properties
222).
Herrnstein
conditions"
formal
what
properties
of a
Smith views
other
of a narrative
of what she terms "multiple interacting conditions"
(222).
will be
later.
The
misperceptions
Herrnstein
of narrative
Smith could well
regarding the nature
and text cited by Handelman
be the basis
of Ambrose Bierce's
short stories have remained,
for the continuing
uncertainty
short story technique.
to a large extent,
critically
and
That
unexplored
Bierce's
until the
past decade indicates the traditional difficulty readers and critics have had in
understanding him as a writer.
difficulty.
narrative,
Bierce's stylistics contribute much to this
But the impediment of many critics is their dualistic model of
that
"naive Platonism"
Herrnstein
"logically dubious and methodologically
scrutiny,
Bierce's
structure.
that
so aptly
distracting"
(209).
stories do not reflect this dualistic
points
out as
Even under careful
concept of narrative
His fusion of time and events and his atypical treatment of what are
traditionally
narrative's
Smith
called reality and dream prohibit clear assessment of the
character,
Bierce's
at least within
"combination
of realism
structuralist narratology.
and romantic
more than one critic to despair of ever classifying
Thus,
extravangance
Bierce's
stories"
we
has
find
led
(Woodruff
3
91).
He has been placed by some "squarely within"
the naturalist tradition
(Wiggins 46) and called by others a "precursor of contemporary
experimental
fiction" (Davidson 20).
In this thesis I will study five of Bierce's short stories, "An Occurrence
at Owl Creek Bridge," "The Death of Halpin Frayser," "The Difficulty of Crossing
a Field," "The Man and the Snake," and "A Psychological Shipwreck," and will
reach possible
interpretations
of Bierce's
traditionally assigned to them.
critical
writings other than those
I will revise the traditional critical theory and
readings of Bierce's short stories by considering
intertextuality,
a theory
of narrative
criticism
more
Hebraic
akin
to what
Herrnstein
Smith advocates when she proposes conceiving of narrative as a social
transaction.
She suggests:
that an alternative
conception
of language views
strings of discrete signifiers that represent
utterances
corresponding
not
as
sets of
discrete signifieds, but as verbal responses-that is, as acts which, like
any acts, are performed in response to various sets of conditions.
These conditions
variables
consist of all those circumstantial
of which every utterance is a function.
these conditions
are conventionally
implied by
and psychological
Although some of
and are,
accordingly,
inferable from the linguistic form of an utterance, they are not
confined to and cannot be reduced
"signifieds."
to specific
"referents"
or
(222)
Herrnstein
Smith
advocates
individual
narratives
as
(actualize,
manifest,
map,
rejecting
sets
or
of
any
narratological
model
"surface-discourse-signifiers
express)
sets
of
which
that
views
represent
underlying-story-signifieds"
4
(222).
Instead,
narratives should be understood to be a narrator's verbal
responses "shaped and constrained by . . . sets of multiple interacting
conditions" (Herrustein
construct
listeners
Smith 222).
a narrative:
or readers
"context
addressed"
and material
and
to them"; and "such psychological
telling the tale and
knowledge,
are
"multiple
Hebraic
narrative
meanings"
act"
fostering
(Handelman
xiv).
desires,
theory
relationship
expectations,
corresponds
Traditionally,
memories,
When
the traditional
that within a
interpretability"
that "interpretation
opposed
to what
the Hebrews' Rabbis
on the assumption
"endless
but that interpretation-as
divine
"particular
the narrator's
theory of intertextuality,
of textual interpretation
Thus, the Rabbis maintained
inseparable,
central
interests,
mode of textual interpretation.
based their theory
xiv).
as the
nature of
including
(222).
Smith's proposed
identifies
setting,"
variables as the narrator's motives for
and prior experiences"
Handelman
text
"the
all the particular
Herrnstein
Rabbinic
She suggests that the following variables
(Handelman
and text were not only
to incarnation-was
Christianity
proclaimed
the
that the
word, God, had become incarnate in Christ, it claimed to have the "final and
of the now 'Old' Testament text" (Handelman xiv).
Handelman contends that the very "history of interpretation . . . has been .
determined
by the schism
between Jews
issue of proper interpretation
and Christians
of the text" (xiv).
precisely
.
validating interpretation
over the
She holds that Christianity
eventually divorced itself from Judaism and married with Greek philosophy,
establishing
itself throughout
Western culture
(xiv).
the Roman Empire to become a foundation of
As Handelman explains,
"In literary
criticism, major
modern theorists, from Coleridge and Wordsworth to Arnold, Eliot, and the New
5
Critics, or more recent
figures such as Northrop Frye, are heavily indebted to
their respective Catholic or Protestant concepts
meaning" (xiv).
rejected
With their deference to Greek thought, Western critics have
the validity of Hebraic
play in literary
of word, logos, text, and
criticism.
intertextuality
and neglected
the role it can
But Handelman points out that the last century has
seen "the fall of Christianity's prestige" and the increasing
"entry of the Jews
into the full intellectual life of Europe" (xv), both of which introduced
variety
of questions
which previously
traditional
concerning
the
had been precluded
criticism
representing
"failures,"
physical
"ruptures,"
reveal Heidegger's
and
words
narrative
text,
perceived
entitites.
"absences"
to function
mimetically,
But such terms
infiltrating
between language
comprise
as a system
as "discrepancies,"
literary
critical
thought
awareness of the lack of
and the world.
Hebraic thought,
has never understood language to function mimetically.
which
questions
simply by the foundation upon which
and the post-structuralists'
mimetic correspondence
however,
of the
rested.
Language is traditionally
of signs
nature
a
language are thought actually
to contain
Instead, the
the essence
of
being, and the text is thought to include more than the written word-all
experiences correspond to and interact to create the final text.
Herrnstein
Smith's
proposed
theory of intertextuality
language
narrative
assert
a more
theory
and
intimate
Handelman's
Rabbinic
correspondence
between
and the world than that of mere representation.
the Reader:
Affective Stylistics,"
that unwittingly
reflects
elements
Stanley Fish proposes
of Hebraic
Oman
Thus, both
In "Literature
a theory
intertextuality
(25).
in
of literature
To
"RON""
6
understand
Hebraic
intertextuality further,
let us consider some of Stanley
Fish's ideas that have come to be known as reader response theory.
To answer the question how it is that different readers reach different
readings, Fish articulated
the theory that readers
"make"
literature.
theory was reactive to Wimsatt and Beardsley's essay on the affective
His
fallacy,
which pointed out the danger of solipsism in attributing meaning to the
reader and which instead upheld the text as the generator of meaning (2).
Fish wrote "Literature in the Reader:
Affective Stylistics" to articulate his
belief that meaning is created by the reader.
Fish points out in the 1980
printing of Is There a Text in this Class? that he "would not now subscribe to
the tenets put forward" in "Literature in the Reader:
which was published in 1970 (Fish 22).
Affective Stylistics,"
But Fish does still struggle to address
accusations that the theory is merely solipsistic on the one hand and "a recent
turn of the new-critical
screw" (7) on the other.
My interest in "Literature in
the Reader" lies in Fish's insistence that the reader must somehow be a part of
the generating of meaning, that the text is not self-sufficient.
To explain his
theory, Fish constructs the following sentence to analyze:
That Judas perished by hanging himself, there is no certainty in
Scripture: though in one place it seems to affirm, and by a doubtful
word hath given occasion to translate it; yet in another place, in a
more punctual description, it maketh it improbable,
overthrow it.
and seems to
(23)
I will accompany Fish's analysis of this sentence with my own explanation
of
how each of his points parallels in some way the theory of Hebraic
intertextuality.
I
7
Fish begins his explanation of how meaning is determined by stating
that this particular sentence
about Judas says nothing.
saying nothing is one of "progressive decertainizing"
Here the strategy of
He notes the
(Fish 23).
range of possibilities in meaning in the phrases "there is no," "doubtful,"
"certainty," "improbable,"
perceptions
of meaning
"seems."
Then he traces the shifts in readers'
each new phrase.
with
Fish blames the inefficiency
of the statement on its "refusal to yield a declarative statement" (25).
ceases to ask the question,
"What does this sentence mean?"
to ask, "What does this sentence do?"
But Fish
and instead begins
In thus shifting his perception of the
nature of an utterance, he finds that the text :
. . . is no longer an object, a thing-in-itself, but an event, something
And it is
that happens to, and with the participation of, the reader.
this event, this happening-all of it and not anything that could be
said about it or any information one might take away from it-that is, I
would argue, the meaning of the sentence.
(Fish 25)
Fish's statement parallels Hebraic intertextuality in that it allows words to be a
dynamic power which can initiate and activate, a creative force.
Fish
identifies the problem of the sentence's meaning as the "suspension of the
reader between the alternatives its syntax momentarily offers"
according shift of the reader's perspective on it.
(26)
and the
"What is a problem if the
[sentence] is considered as an object, a thing-in-itself, becomes a fact when it
is regarded as an occurrence"
(Fish 26).
Likewise,
Hebraic
intertexuality
allows nothing to remain outside the scope of the text, not readers or their
prior experiences,
not the written composition,
letter, or any of their alterations.
All
not the syntax, the word, the
such elements compose the text, for the
8
of the reading, the action initiated by the
text is perceived to be the experience
words.
To accept
the statement as meaningful
the statement is attributed
a logical meaning.
does not necessarily mean that
Fish does not require that a
sentence be logical in order to have meaning; he allows for juxtaposition
instead.
Juxtaposition is the position of two objects being side by side or close
together,
"both of which lead in spite of their differing positions to equal
consequences" (Kunst 986).
"Here . . . is the 'logic of
Handelman explains:
metaphor' which Riceour articulated, wherein the logical action takes place in
a 'transgression' of ontology" so that juxtaposition can be thought of as the
display of something which simultaneously is and is not, existing on the
53).
boundary of the same and the different (Handelman
displayed in Fish's second example:
We see this best
"Nor did they not perceive the evil plight"
(25) from Milton's Paradise Lost (I, 335).
Fish explains that as readers attempt
to determine whether they (fallen angels) did or they did not perceive
the evil
plight, the questions which arise due to the ambiguity of the statement are
part of the statement's meaning, even though they take place in readers'
minds, not on the page.
"Subsequently, we discover that the answer to the
question . . . is, 'they did and they didn't"'
(Fish 26).
He explains that Milton
the angels do perceive, or
exploits the two senses of the word "perceive":
experience, the physical repercussions of their fall, but they do not perceive,
or comprehend, the moral repercussions.
perceive
That the fallen angels do and do not
their plight illustrates juxtaposition.
element of Hebraic
intertextuality,
Juxtaposition
for it allows
is a critical
for progressive
interpretation.
Because intertexuality presents a process, not a product, it relies on an
9
of a contiguous
awareness
upon juxtaposition,
whole
a continuous
and generates
series
further interpretations based
of possibilities
of meaning
within each
element, even those as minute as the letters composing the words.
Fish too conceives of interpretation as a process.
returns to his sentence about Judas
For example, he
and argues that readers'
responses to the
ninth word in the sentence will be shaped by their responses to the first eight
Here we see his inclination toward perceiving interpretation as a
words.
linear progression.
"The basis of the method is a consideration of the temporal
flow of the reading experience, and it is assumed that the reader responds in
terms of that flow and not to the whole utterance" (Fish 27).
In doing so, Fish
defines interpretation as a decoding of a set of instants and a process by which
a temporal
hierarchy
so that the decoding
becomes
the
readers
construct
event.
Fish explains that because readers are presented with the clause
Judas perished by hanging himself"
"That
first, before reading "There is no
certainty in Scripture," the status of assertion is in doubt.
Fish says that if the
clauses were reversed and read "There is no certainty in Scriptures that Judas
perished by hanging himself," readers
would be offered a perspective which
would be confirmed rather than challenged by the words which follow it (2728).
Ultimately, it would be "a difference in meaning" (Fish 28).
Fish maintains that any statement, any word, cannot help but provide
experience.
experience.
This experience, as far as Fish is concerned, is a sort of linguistic
Readers
are presented
with linguistic
experiences
for their
viewing, the value of which "is predicated on the idea of meaning as an event"
(Fish 28).
Something, he says, is occurring, there is some activity, some
creation by virtue of the words in readers' minds.
Any sentence,
any word, is
10
Thus, he ultimately concludes that
"actively there, doing something" (Fish 30).
a different meaning results when words are reorganized.
understood, though, that
a different
meaning does not result
power (Boman
69),
from
To conceive of words as
reorganization as much as a different experience does.
"actively there, doing something"
It could be
(Fish 30) is to attribute to words
another characteristic
of Hebraic
a vivifying
intertextuality.
Because, for Fish, meaning in literature is activity, the result of a
process engaging readers and a written composition,
Fish suggests that "there is no direct
relationship between the meaning of a sentence and what its words mean . .
.
solely responsible for meaning.
language ceases to be
the information an utterance gives, its message, is a constituent of, but
certainly not to be identified with, its meaning" (32).
The information, that
signified by the words, does not provide the sentence's complete meaning but
is included within the decoding experience to comprise meaning.
Thus, it
might be said that for Fish words do not merely represent the world and texts
reflect it.
Instead, words and texts become one element of the world,
within it and simultaneously creating it.
inherent
Instead of allowing logic to cancel
out possibilities of meaning, a metonymy involving the world and language
allows readers to recognize that the written composition is incomplete,
merely
one constituent of the entire experience, or activity of interpretation.
Hebraic
intertextuality
relies upon this principle
of metonymy for its continuous
interpretation of all facets of a text (Handelman 75).
In "Literature in the Reader:
Affective
Stylistics," Fish objects to the
idea that meaning is logical and found inherently within the word
as opposed
to something constructed by the word in its interaction with readers.
Fish
11
that language is one constituent in the production of meaning, and
advocates
that that production utilizes as well the unique reader complete with previous
experiences and the circumstances
of the reading.
in the interpretation of "sentences
meaning
Such a theory finds
(and works) that don't mean
anything, in the sense of not making [logical] sense" (Fish 36).
Fish finds no
difficulty embracing such ideas as those articulated above because "to mean in
that discursive way creates the experience that is its meaning; and analysis of
that experience rather than of logical content is able to make sense of one
With such a statement he has
kind-experiential sense-out of nonsense" (37).
echoed
a major tenet of Hebraic
intertextuality.
Fish supports his idea of how meaning is produced by rejecting the
objective text, calling such a concept a "dangerous illusion" (43).
He
recognizes the tendency in literary circles to assume that the word contains a
"content," that any book or statement or written text of any kind contains
everything it needs to exist.
Fish argues that the text is not self-sufficient and
complete but needs the reader to fulfill it.
In doing so he recognizes that he is
setting himself up for being charged with presenting
solipsism.
a rationale for
"Of course, it would be easy for someone to point out that I have not
answered the charge of solipsism but merely presented a rationale for a
solipsistic procedure;
but such an objection would have force only if a better
mode of procedure were available" (Fish 49).
While it may still be solipsism,
Fish says he would rather "have an acknowledged and controlled subjectivity
than an objectivity which is finally an illusion"
(49).
Unlike Fish's reader
response theory, Hebraic intertextuality does not sacrifice the text for the sake
of readers.
Nor does Hebraic intertextuality
sacrifice readers for the sake of
12
the text.
Instead, intertexuality
considers readers
and the written text to be
two elements of a number of wholes.
My purpose is not to justify Fish's reader response theory.
Nor is it my
But I do propose that to familiarize
purpose to justify Bierce's stylistics.
oneself with Hebraic intertextuality is to open doors upon new paths to follow
Handelman
literature.
contribution to American
in our exploration of Bierce's
contends that Western critics of the text approach their study "within the
context of the Biblical tradition, or in reaction to it" (xiv), relying upon what
she
terms "substitute
in hermeneutic
theology"
(xiii), or the extensive
application
has
of interpretation"
She feels such a "modern science
study.
of metaphor
deeper "theological roots" and that "it is time to bring . . . repressed theological
specters to light," to allow a "return of theology into secular systems of
thought" (Handelman
I intend for this thesis to support Handelman's
xviii).
contention that the Biblical tradition of hermenuetics has dominated as the
mode of interpretation within the study of literary criticism.
validate
her call for an alternative
the traditional
Hebraic
theory
strategy of literary
I also seek to
criticism
incorporating
of intertextuality.
I do not claim that for the purpose of this study I have chosen the best
of Bierce's short stories.
Since my interest lies not in a definitive study of
Bierce's work, I have merely selected those short stories which best
demonstrate my thesis.
However,
the extremely broad
spectrum of Bierce's
works, which includes noteworthy stories as well as insignificant tales, will be
represented in this study.
Grenander calls "An Occurrence at Owl Creek
Bridge" one of "those remarkable short stories on which . . . [Bierce's] literary
reputation rests today" (54-55).
This story lies at one end of the spectrum.
..............-
"A
R--
13
Psychological
which, according
Shipwreck,"
to Woodruff,
is a "conventional
story" with "commonplace motifs" which "could have been done as well or
better by a number of writers" (127) and "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field,"
on which little or no critical work has been done, lie at the other end.
Death of Halpin Frayser"
"The
and "The Man and the Snake" lie between the two
ends and are considered by many to be typical but yet not preeminent
What value each of these stories has lies in its
examples of Bierce's style.
narrative
structure
and the function
of language
I will
in that structure.
provide an analysis of these five short stories to identify the techniques Bierce
used to distort time and the world and to attempt to identify what Davidson says
is Peirce's "'tychism'
(uncertainty or indeterminancy)"
(4).
Grasping the
ambiguity of language outside the traditional logical hierarchy of thought is
crucial to the development
explain
which will
Bierce's stories.
the most insightful point Bierce made concerning. writing is
Perhaps
writer works with materials
that the great
that have no tangible or finite
existence, things "mysteriously insubstantial . . . , spirits of dream
.
.
adequately
of a theory of literary interpretation
existences not of earth . . . , the shadow and the portent" (Works X, 244).
Nothing but a writer's own creative imagination makes that writer an artist.
Woodruff explains:
independence
"What Bierce is most conscious of is the imagination's
of the everyday world, its ability to carry the mind out of the
actual conditions of human limitation.
This idea is hardly new; its real
importance lies in the appeal it held for Bierce" (93).
Woodruff
calls
Bierce's
language
"the imagination's
liberating power"
(93).
14
In order to explain how Woodruff's assertion can be supported
with an understanding
broadened
of Hebraic intertextuality,
and
I will first survey
the scholarly interpretations of the five short stories I have selected.
Next, I
will introduce elements of the Hebraic philosophy of language and time and a
theory of textual interpretation.
The traditional
interpretations
of these
stories will then be amended by an application of Hebraic intertexuality.
stress
Hebraic
the value of the
interpretations of Bierce's stories.
technique
I will
alternate
in reaching
No objective in applying the technique will
be alluded to other than to indicate that many previous literary critics, some
contemporary with Bierce as well as some who view him in retrospect, fail to
comprehend:
1) the multiple functions of language, and 2) the resultant
uncertainty of language, Peirce's tychism.
In doing so, they also fail to grasp
all the implications in Bierce's short stories which take advantage of the
ambiguous nature of language.
An understanding
of Hebraic intertextuality
can allow readers and critics to understand the strange and elusive nature of
Bierce's short stories and their possible multitudes
Ambrose
When I refer to Greek
Several terms I shall be using need clarification.
thought, I refer to post-Platonic thought.
synonymous
language.
of interpretations.
The terms Hebrew and Israelite are
and refer in this paper to those who reject the mimetic nature of
I do not by any means intend to imply that Hebrews are the only
people who view words as independent agents with creative power.
oriental cultures conceive
current
Judeo-Christian
of language as functioning
perception
of an absolute
similarly.
world
Other
However, the
and a mimetic
language resulted from a fusion of the Hebraic and the Greek.
Thus, to
indicate how Greek ideas diffused Hebraic ideas in the West, I will concentrate
15
on the Hebraic rather than attempt a general study of the oriental view of
language.
To survey the entire oriental culture and to contrast that thought
with Greek thought would be cumbersome and pointless in this thesis.
The term Rabbi refers to the Hebrew scholars whose primary
occupation is to interpret the Torah, the written text and God's Word.
I will use
the term text as the Rabbis conceive it, not only as the written composition, but
as all elements of existence surrounding it.
Text includes readers and what
they bring to the reading, the milieu it came out of, and the milieu it creates.
By time I do not mean progressive chronology but a collection of experiences,
and by the world I mean existence as human beings know it, including the
earth, the universe, and the spiritual world.
Let us look first at the way Bierce
uses time and the world to affect the reading of his stories.
CHAPTER II
PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE: TIME IN THE MANY DIFFERENT WORLDS
OF AMBROSE BIERCE
Critical examinations
of Bierce's
impressive ideas concerning
the writer's
work have presented undeniably
stylistics and development
of theme.
The two most significant examinations are Cathy N. Davidson's The
Experimental
Grenander's
Fictions of Ambrose Bierce:
Bierce.
Ambrose
forerunner of post-modernism.
Structuring the Ineffable and M. E.
Davidson's study identifies Bierce as a
Grenander divides Bierce's work into didactic
tales and three kinds of mimetic tales, those of passion, those of moral choice,
and those of action.
Both Davidson and Grenander have devoted a considerable
amount of their scholarly energies to retrieving
Bierce's work from the
neglected state it has so long endured as a result of public and critical
ambivalence.
Grenander
three overshadowing
from
points out that this ambivalence has resulted
issues, Bierce's disappearance in Mexico in 1913, his
charisma, and the fact that his "vast literary production has not been
carefully investigated"
(8, 9).
It is true that there is "more popular interest
than critical response to his writings" (American
Scholarship
Critical response should be neglected no longer, for Bierce's
writings are the greater part of his mystery.
understand the man.
Perhaps to understand them is to
However, as Grenander points out, "we have not yet
developed critical concepts enabling us to deal adequately with his work
(9).
16
. .
.
1977:241).
Literary
17
In this chapter I will review the most widely
accepted interpretations
of
Bierce's work to point out that while they serve quite well to present the
difficulties of Bierce's stylistics, they do not resolve the questions raised by
those stylistics.
I will concentrate on the critical studies of the short stories
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," "The Man and the Snake," and "The Death
of Halpin Frayser," as well as the one critical statement made concerning "A
Psychological Shipwreck."
Crossing a Field."
consider Hebraic
I know of no critical study of "The Difficulty of
My analysis will provide the context within which to
intertextuality
as a new method
for analyzing
Bierce's
stories.
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is Bierce's premier story,
one he ever wrote" (Woodruff 153).
"the best
Divided into three segments, the story
introduces readers to Peyton Farquhar as he stands on Owl Creek Bridge with a
noose around his neck, just before his hanging.
omniscient narrator
who concentrates
who are preparing the hanging.
acknowledgment
him.
on the
Next,
of his "unsteadfast
The scene is described by an
actions
of the Federal
soldiers
we are given Farquhar's
footing"
and the
swirling water beneath
We are told that "he closes his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon
his wife and children."
Then it appears that the omniscient narrator makes an
aloof comment about the water, "touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding
mists under the banks . . . ."
mind, to his consciousness
Then we return to the workings of Farquhar's
of a "new disturbance,"
which he determines to be
the ticking of his watch and which "hurt his ears like the thrust of a knife"
(11).
then
These shifts
back
again,
from the narrator's
which continue
perception
throughout the
to Farquhar's
story,
are
perception
signalled
by
and
free
18
indirect discourse, a "version
of indirect reporting . . . freed from syntactic
domination by any reporting clause" and characterized
adopt the orientation,
any
in deictic words, of the reported character rather than
reporting individual"
(Toolan
123).
introduces his readers to the opinions
characters
by a "tendency to
An author's
and perceptions
in order to confuse objective
free indirect
discourse
of one or more
reality.
In the second section, we return to the day before when Farquhar is
informed that Federal troops are repairing railroads at Owl Creek Bridge.
he determines to sabotage them for the Southern cause (12).
"returns" to the scene with which the story opened,
Here
The last section
and we are told, "As
Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost
consciousness
and was as one already dead" (13).
We are then informed that he
awakened from this state.
The rest of the story is a description of each
sensation
and subsequent
thought
However,
in the last sentence
Farquhar experiences
the narrator intervenes
during
again
his escape.
to inform us that
"Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from
side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge" (18).
sentence
which creates for readers
a problem
This is the
with time in the short
story.
Readers must realize that time is fluid in the narrative in order to assimilate
the story.
Fluid time might be understood not to mean stream-like but to mean
sea-like, in the sense that time does not exist as a progressive flow but rather
as a rhythmic body.
narrative
Bierce's free indirect discourse is woven throughout the
text and provides the first indication
of fluid time in the discourse.
Clearly, time is critical to "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."
To
conceive of time in Bierce's short story as linear is to miss much that the story
III.In - 111 10
19
If readers refuse to accept that Farquhar "knew that the rope had
has to offer.
then they prevent themselves
broken and he had fallen into the stream" (13),
from embracing the text as a whole, the whole of Peyton Farquhar's
At the story's last sentence,
they will reject the narrative
dream or a hallucination, or at the very
least, illogical and therefore
experience.
unacceptable.
as a
F. J. Logan argues
Davidson calls the story a trap (129), while
that the story is as logical and "as tightly controlled and meticulously
organized as any story is likely to be" (103).
However, both critics seek to
formulate interpretations of the story based on linear time and are thus led to
make erroneous assertions.
vital
Bierce teases
information,
insufficient
information"
"By deliberately
Davidson maintains,
(55).
the
reader
into
drawing
withholding
inferences
But to say that Bierce withholds
from
information
is
to imply that there is an ultimate truth to which all information must
eventually
lead.
She assumes that there is an absolute world, an absolute
reality which Bierce's work must represent.
Logan suggests that Bierce's
"drastic fictional distortion of time" (106) indicates that Farquhar is
hallucinating (110).
But to say that Farquhar is hallucinating is to impose
one's own reality on Farquhar's reality,
an unwarranted
exercise since it
assumes that there is an ultimate reality to which all experiences must
conform.
Logan assumes that his view of the world is more valid than
Farquhar's and that since Farquhar's reality does not align with his own, it
Setting up as absolute one perception of time
must then be an hallucination.
and the world is one mistake
inherent in modem
Other traditional interpretations
based
on linear,
progressive
time
Western
literary
of the events in Bierce's
and argue
that Farquhar's
criticism.
story are also
experience
is
20
subconscious, subliminal,
James G. Powers proposes that the
or a dream.
experience, not just a
occurrence of the short story's title is a psychological
physical one and is thus a dream of some sort (279).
accidental
He believes that it is not
that Bierce describes Farquhar's plunge from the bridge in the
active voice:
"Farquhar dived-dived as deeply as he could" (15).
the passive voice, i.e., "Farquhar was dropped," Bierce indicates
By not using
that Farquhar
is in control of the activities in his head and allows Farquhar to take the
initiative in his journey.
Powers describes the journey as one composed of
"sensations unaccompanied
by thought" (13),
only two sentences
a phrase he excerpts from the
narrative.
However,
Farquhar's
"power of thought was restored" (13).
experience
only as a dream or some other sort of psychological
outside the realm of the physical.
later the narrative
Traditionally,
tells us that
Powers sees Farquhar's
experience
in the Western world only
dreams are accepted as disjointed or fluid, because they are imagined to be
contained within a period of semiconsciousness
or unconsciousness.
Powers'
conclusion indicates that he perceives time as linear.
John Crane states that Farquhar "has imposed a temporary reality, the
desires of his heart, upon the true reality of his hanging within the confines
of the swollen moment of his post-mortem consciousness" (364).
that Farquhar has devised his own reality
is commendable.
His notion
But he relegates it
to a sphere outside a "real world" and determines that the experiences of
Peyton Farquhar must be postmortem
since death itself is the end of the
progression of events in a subject's life.
that
Farquhar
can only
has
remained
on the
Since at the end of the story we know
bridge
during
the
entire narrative,
assume that Farquhar was hanged and dead before
Crane
we are informed
21
of the fact by the omniscient narrator.
Farquhar's experience postmortem
Contrary to Crane, I do not consider
and see no reason why it must be.
There is
no reason to assume that Farquhar dies before "all is darkness and silence!"
(18), the last record we have of his experience before we are told by the
omniscient narrator that "Peyton Farquhar was dead" (18).
Peyton Farquhar never dies.
include his death.
I submit that
His reality is a product of his words and does not
Instead, he has used the power of his language to reject
linear time and to reconstruct time in order to escape what readers conceive
of
as the reality of his death.
Unlike Peyton Farquhar, who uses the power of his language to escape
death, Harker Brayton in "The Man and the Snake" relies on the power of his
language to effect his own death.
Woodruff considers this story so "inferior in
artistic merit as to seem almost a caricature"
since it lacks Bierce's mastery at
But it is a
"suggestive ambiguity or symbolic vitality and compression" (144).
fine example of Bierce's ability to uncover other worlds.
An ironic tale and what Grenander calls a mimetic tale of passion, "The
Man and the Snake" is composed of four sections.
In the first section an
omniscient narrator tells us that Harker Brayton scoffs at an epigraph
describing the power of a snake's eyes to draw forth its victims.
Brayton says
to himself, "The only marvel in the matter is that the wise and learned in
Morryster's day should have believed such nonsense . . . " (142-143).
At the
end of this section we discover that a snake lies coiled beneath Brayton's bed,
beside which he reads in a chair.
Section two provides a history and a description
of the main character,
the same function of the second section of "An Occurrence
at Owl Creek
22
Here we learn that the house in which Harker Brayton is a guest
Bridge."
boasts a large wing designated as "the Snakery," where the host, a doctor of
zoology,
conducts his experiments.
the section
removes readers
Narrated in the third person omniscient,
from a progression
of events and thus exhibits
fluid time.
In section three we return to the confrontation between man and
serpent and the same free indirect discourse which shifts between perceptions
as we found in "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."
At one point we are told
by an omniscient narrator, "it had occurred to his mind that the act [of
notifying a servant of the snake's location]
of fear" (145).
might subject him to the suspicion
But in the next paragraph we read:
The reptile was of a species with which Brayton was unfamiliar.
Its
length he could only conjecture; the body at the largest visible part
In what way was it dangerous,
seemed about as thick as his forearm.
if in any way?
Was it venomous?
Was it a constrictor? His knowledge
of nature's danger signals did not enable him to say; he had never
deciphered
the code.
If not dangerous, the creature was at least offensive.
"matter out of place"-an impertinence.
setting.
It was de.LEW-
The gem was unworthy of its
(145)
In this section of the story we clearly shift from perspective to perspective.
Those thoughts I have italicized are Harker Brayton's; the others are those of
the omniscient narrator.
irresistible
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and
cannot
At the end of section three Brayton finds the snake
prevent himself
from
advancing
toward
it.
23
The fourth section introduces the doctor and his wife, who, while
reading downstairs, hear a "mighty cry"
(148) ringing through the house.
They find Brayton dead, half underneath the bed, where the doctor finds a
stuffed
snake
with shoe-button
eyes.
Woodruff claims "we have Harker Brayton, performing incredible
contortions, mesmerized by a bogy under the bed" (146).
While the snake may
Woodruff
be a bogy to Woodruff, to Brayton there was nothing bogus about it.
insists that "the immobility-the trivial irony-of the taxidermist's
art"
diminishes the impact of the tale (147):
The result is a flawed technique marked by uncertainty of tone, a
painful combination
of humor and seriousness, and a breakdown in
coherence and unity.
Instead of the protagonist being pulled apart by
things as they are, the story itself starts to unravel, a victim of Bierce's
cynical disbelief in its significance or validity.
(148)
Woodruff's insistence that Brayton is "pulled apart" by things as they are not
indicates his inability to consider that what "is not" for him may yet be for
someone else.
No one is informed until the end of the story that what Brayton
sees is a stuffed snake.
informed
Readers do not know until that revelation that they are
of Brayton's perceptions
Bierce's
only.
ability to construct a world for readers parallels Brayton's
ability to construct his own world, which includes a living snake coiled
beneath his bed.
apparently
The snake's eyes at first were "two small points of light,
about an inch apart.
They might have been reflections
jet above him, in metal nailheads . . . " (143).
of the gas
Brayton looks again and the
lights are still there, but "They seemed to have become brighter than before,
24
He returns
shining with a greenish lustre he had not at first observed" (143).
to reading but eventually drops the book and stares "where the points of light
shone with, it seemed to him, an added fire" (143).
Now his attention "disclosed,
almost directly under the foot-rail of the bed, the coils of a large serpent-the
points of light were its eyes" (143).
sparks, radiating an infinity
electric
eyes "were two
Finally, we read, "the eyes were now
of luminous needles"
(146)
and then the
dazzling suns" and "gave off enlarging rings of rich and vivid
colors . . . " (143).
Bierce uses free indirect discourse to prevent himself from
having to inform readers that the snake under the bed is stuffed.
the snake was "matter out of place"
By telling us
(145), Bierce enters Harker Brayton's mind
With free
and takes readers with him to alter the perspective of the narrative.
indirect discourse, Bierce allows his reader to choose for himself what to
believe about who is saying what when.
The success of the story is in the fact
As Davidson
that readers do not question what it is they actually follow.
explains, "This story especially assesses the human capacity for not
discovering
the truth"
(33).
Woodruff asserts that "immobility-the trivial irony-of the taxidermist's
art" results in Brayton's being "pulled apart" by things as they are not (29),
and this is true in a sense-the art in a stuffed snake is trivial and results in
Wiggins agrees and says, "The climax reveals a psychological
in autosuggestion" (29).
But in another sense neither of these points is true,
for Brayton died, which can hardly be thought nothing.
that Brayton's
study
"language clearly reflects his perceptual
Davidson explains
hyperbole
Perception here is almost totally governed by psychological
reflects external reality hardly at all" (35).
. .
.
nothing.
projection and
Since Brayton is unaware that it is
25
Davidson can argue that Brayton's
hyperbolic for others, for him it is reality.
perceptions are hyperbolic because she has read the end of the story and has
Brayton never was privy to such
been informed that the snake is stuffed.
Harker Brayton attempts
information.
he is not afraid.
to use words to convince himself that
Ultimately, however, he succumbs to the words he reads and
believes that he has seen a real snake and that it mesmerizes him.
attempt to use language
While his
to construct reality without a snake fails, his firm
Wiggins calls Brayton's experience
belief in the word dooms him to death.
autosuggestive because there is no live snake and yet Brayton dies as a result
But Mary Grenander may explain the
of his belief in the contrary (29).
phenomenon
best
when she states,
"the protagonist
reacts
emotionally
to what
She says:
he thinks is a situation of extreme jeopardy" (97).
Obviously the base of this psychology is the intellectual awareness of
danger.
Bierce, however, makes the intellectual
awareness on which
the whole psychology of his protagonist's terror rests a wrong one;
hence all the emotional and sensory reactions which follow are
erroneous,
and readers'
inappropriateness
perception
of this gruesome
to the real situation
distillation of horror to these tales.
is what gives their peculiar
(94)
But it must never be forgotten that readers do not realize this "gruesome
inappropriateness"
until the
end of the
story,
and that Harker
Brayton never
realizes it.
In "The Death of Halpin Frayser,"
another story that Grenander has
identified as a tale of mimetic passion, Bierce again uses free indirect
discourse.
This technique forces readers to follow the text carefully in order to
26
is only the character's reality.
realize that what Frayser experiences
Structurally identical to "The Man and the Snake," the story is composed of
four sections and an epigraph attributed to a hypothetical sage.
In the first
section, we meet Halpin Frayser awakening from a dreamless sleep in a forest.
He whispers a name, "Catherine Larue," the irony of which we fail to
Subsequently, we are provided an explanation of why
appreciate at this point.
he finds himself asleep in a forest.
person limited narrator,
Normally, narration is offered by a third
since it is mere observation,
except for the statement,
"one of God's mysterious messengers . . . pronounced the awakening word in
the ear of the sleeper, who sat upright and spoke, he knew not why, a name,
he knew not whose" (396).
He falls asleep again and dreams.
We travel with
him via the omniscient narrator through the forest in his dream until a
ghostly apparition appears and the section
ends.
In section two we are provided information about the character's
background, just as we were in section two of "An Occurrence
Bridge" and "The Man and the Snake."
at Owl Creek
In section three, we return to the
confrontation with the ghostly apparition, "the thing so like, yet so unlike his
mother" (401).
Presumably, we still follow Frayser's dream, for we leave
section three with the statement, "Halpin Frayser dreamed that he was dead"
(402).
In the fourth section we accompany a sheriff and his man at arms as
they search the woods for a madman recently spotted there.
story of Catherine
Larue and that the madman
is her husband, who murdered her.
for whom
We learn the
the sherrif searches
Ultimately they come upon an
unidentified body, which we know to be Halpin Frayser's, lying upon
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27
Catherine Larue's grave
in
in the position Frayser adopted in his dream
apparition so like and unlike his
section three to ward off the strangling
When the sheriff remembers that "the murdered woman's name had
mother.
been Frayser" (408), we understand the irony that Halpin Frayser died
unknowingly on his mother's grave
apparition
murdered
Grenander
and the double irony that somehow her
him.
argues
that Frayser's
dream
remains only
a dream
and that
his death is a "realistic external drama" divorced from the dream (110).
She
points out that when Holker and Jarrelson discover Frayser's body, the dead
man "bears all the marks of a man who has been physically strangled, not one
who has died of horror" (109).
She points to the "signs of furious struggle"
(406), "the unmistakable impressions
of human knees" beside the body (406),
and "a laugh so unnatural" it fills the men with "unspeakable dread" (408).
Aptly pointing out that the narrator offers no explanation of these facts,
Grenander assigns them to a "realistic external drama" (110).
Frayser was murdered by his stepfather.
this interpretation,
those which
She says that
All the other clues which contradict
"point to a supernatural-and
explanation . . . are red herrings" only (111).
superficial-
Grenander believes that Bierce
employs the following epigraph about zombies in order to mislead readers
(107):
For by death hath been wrought greater change than hath been
shown.
Whereas in general
upon occasion,
the spirit that removed
cometh back
and is sometimes seen of those in flesh (appearing
in
the form of the body it bore) yet it hath happened that the veritable
body without the spirit hath walked.
And it is attested of those
28
encountering who have lived to speak thereon that a lich so raised up
hath no natural
affection,
nor remembrance
thereof,
but only
hate.
Also, it is known that some spirits which in life were benign become
by death evil altogether.
(395)
But a zombie is a dead human body reanimated.
physically strangling a man.
As such, it is capable of
Thus, it is possible that Frayser was murdered by
a zombie.
Grenander's
Freudian
theory that Frayser's
dream
guilt is unnecessary and gives credit where it is not due.
reflects
repressed
Bierce does inquire
in the story, "what mortal can cope with a creature of his dream?" (402).
The
fact that Frayser dreams is important, not because it explains that he dies from
guilt, but because it allows readers to capture Frayser's perceptions of his own
death.
Grenander's
interpretation
of the
story
remains
inconsistent
with that
theme running through Bierce's stories which indicts fear, not guilt, as
murderer.
While Davidson agrees with Grenander that "The Death of Halpin
Frayser" is full of red herrings, her resignation to the fact that "we cannot ask
where dream leaves off and reality begins when the man who dreams he diesdies" (110)
is more acceptable than Grenander's attempt to resolve irrefutably
the mystery of who killed Halpin Frayser.
Davidson points out that Bierce tells
us, "Vainly [Frayser] sought . . . to reproduce the moment of his sin . . . " (397).
Frayser's stumbling amidst the blood-bathed woods is but a vain effort "of
tracing life backwards in memory"
which he suffers guilt.
(397)
in order to determine the crime
for
"If this passage symbolizes anything, it indicates the
futility of looking for a moral justification for Halpin's fate," says Davidson
29
"Nothing in the story . . . is certain at all" (104-05), she explains, and
(106).
then says the story "calls the conventions of reality
question" (111).
(and 'realism') into
Here it is clear that while Frayser may be attempting to
explain his experience
in terms of retribution
for his past sins, he need not,
for Bierce tells us that to attempt such an explanation is for naught:
he sought . . . " (397).
readers cannot
level . . . .
nightmare
"Vainly
Davidson sums up her interpretation with:
apprehend
the death of Halpin Frayser on
any logical
Interior and exterior worlds, nightmare dream and
reality,
uncertain
past
continually meet and merge . . . .
must continually reject
and problematic
present-
The joke lies in the fact that readers
. . . apparent solutions because they do not
.
adequately comprehend the complexities elsewhere in the text . . .
No one solution can contain
evoked by the text . . . .
weight of its overload.
interpretation.
the unsettled
and
unsettling universe
The text . . . cannot sustain itself under the
The result is a sham of the whole process of
(112-13)
It is quite true that "The Death of Halpin Frayser" is Bierce's most complex and
difficult
tale.
In "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" most readers initally assume to
be reality what they eventually conclude is actually a dream.
In "The Death of
Halpin Frayser" what Frayser and most readers initially assume is a dream
actually appears to be reality at the end of the story.
Frayser's dream is
introduced with "He thought he was walking . . . " (396) not "He dreamed he
was walking . . . ."
The different verbs convey entirely different meanings,
regardless of how subtle that conveyance might be.
"He thought" reveals the
30
same principle found in "The Man and the Snake" and "An Occurrence
Creek Bridge."
Because Frayser thinks something, it allows
define his reality, for it is what he perceives.
at Owl
that something to
Again, one's words construct
He never knows he merely dreams that his mother attacks him;
one's world.
thus, he knows, having experienced the attack in some form, that she attacks.
In "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" the would-be hero believes he has
escaped but ends up hanging instead.
"The Man and the Snake" mocks a young
man's fear of a stuffed snake which eventually kills him.
Indeed, most of
Bierce's stories do not focus on death as much as they use death to direct our
focus toward fear.
"A Psychological Shipwreck" and "The Difficulty of
Crossing a Field," however, do not.
Unlike the other stories, "A Psychological Shipwreck"
are not divided into sections.
Difficulty of Crossing a Field"
and "The
Both are extremely
short and utilize the first person narrative technique at some point in the
Without using free indirect discourse, both succeed
stories.
questions about time and the world.
is "conventional"
Shipwreck"
in raising
Woodruff complains that "A Psychological
and "commonplace"
(127),
the story,
nevertheless, presents time as fluid and shows that another world can be
created with words.
Indeed, the story is about other worlds.
A first person narrator, William Jarrett, tells us that he sails aboard the
Morrow from Liverpool to New York because he seeks a protracted journey to
time reading
He meets Janette Harford, who spends her
"Denneker's Meditations."
subtle, but powerful
For her,
Jarrett develops
attraction which constantly impelled [him]
"a secret,
to seek her
.
recover from his failed business.
He tells us at one point that he ventured whether she might "assist me
." (495).
-
'jQwdw
0
0-
31
to resolve my psychological doubt" (495) about this particular conviction.
She
turned to look at him.
In an instant my mind was dominated by as strange a fantasy as ever
entered human consciousness.
It seemed as if she were looking at me,
an immeasurable
not with, but through, those eyes-from
distance
behind them-and that a number of other persons, men, women and
children,
upon
expressions,
whose
clustered
faces
I caught
about her,
struggling
look at me through the same orbs.
familiar
strangely
with gentle
evanescent
eagerness
to
Ship, ocean, sky-all had vanished.
(495)
Here we have the world with which the story itself is concerned
another
containing
world.
As if all this activity were merely preliminary, the theme of the story is
made clear when Jarrett awakens from his altered
state.
"Impelled by
surely I
cannot say what motive" (495), he glances at a page of the book Miss Harford
cradles in her lap while she dozes, having apparently fallen asleep during
Jarrett's
excursion,
and reads:
To sundry it is given to be drawn away, and to be apart from the body
for a season for, as concerning rills which would flow across each
other the weaker is borne along by the stronger,
so there be certain
of kin whose paths intersecting, their souls do bear company, the
while their bodies go fore-appointed
It may
be that this passage provides
experience.
ways, unknowing.
(495)
an explanation for the aforementioned
But it is most assuredly the context within which
"A Psychological
Shipwreck" is to be explained, as becomes evident by its conclusion.
Here we
32
have
an intrusion
upon
Jarrett's
own
of the
first
omniscient
person
narrative
in
"Denneker's
Meditations"
narration.
Miss Harford awakens, and Jarrett initiates a discussion with her
concerning this passage.
Suddenly the barometer falls drastically, the Captain
exclaims, "Good God!" and Jarrett tells us, "The form of Janette Harford,
invisible in the darkness and spray, was torn from my grasp by the cruel
vortex of the sinking ship, and I fainted . . . " (496).
He awakes by lamplight
"amid the familiar surroundings of the stateroom of a steamer" (496) to
recognize "the face of my friend Gordon Doyle whom I had met in Liverpool on
the day of my embarkation, when he was himself about to sail on the steamer
City of Prague, on which he had urged me to accompany him" (496).
Jarrett believes he has been picked up by the passing ship.
Initially,
Later, he learns
that his friend, eloping with Janette Harford but sailing separately to avoid
detection, plans to meet her in New York.
and asks to see the book.
He notices Doyle has been reading
Doyle tosses to him "Denneker's Meditations," and the
book opens to the marked passage already quoted.
Thus what Jarrett receives
as an explanation for the other world experienced is the same as that which
readers of Biece's short story receive.
Psychological
Shipwreck,"
too, experience,
experience that Jarrett experiences.
in "Denneker's
It is worth noting that readers of "A
Meditations,"
albeit vicariously,
the same
So there is no reason that the explanation
which explains for Jarrett his experience
of the
other world, should not provide the same for readers of "A Psychological
Shipwreck."
The narrative technique of "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field" is like
that of "A Psychological Shipwreck,"
a mixture of third person limited and
33
first person points of view.
The story opens with a completely objective
paragraph which reads like a legal account, and then it follows Williamson as
he makes his way into the pasture in front of his plantation mansion.
In the
process, he meets a neighbor on the pike who, having forgotten to relay to
him information,
directs his coachman to drive back,
and:
as the vehicle turned Williamson was seen by all three, walking
leisurely across the pasture.
At that moment one of the coach horses
stumbled and came near falling.
It had no more than fairly
recovered itself when James Wren cried, "Why, father, what has
become of Mr. Williamson?"
(163)
The next paragraph uses the first person narrative to relay Armour Wren's
account of Williamson's disappearance.
Wren's testimony concludes,
and the
third person limited narrator returns to summarize James Wren's account as a
corroboration of his father's testimony.
The narrator refers to James as the
only other eyewitness and then qualifies himself with "(if that is the proper
term)" (163).
This aside and the objective statement "James Wren had declared
at first that he saw the disappearance, but there is nothing of this in his
testimony given in court" (163-64) yield the most profound insight into the
nature of this tale, that it seeks to undermine the authority we assign to the
premise that seeing is believing, even more than it seeks to relate Williamson's
disappearance.
And, as Bierce himself aptly pointed out, this is because there
is nothing seen to believe;
what must be believed is that which remains
unseen, the fact that Williamson is no longer, at least in the worlds belonging
to his wife and to the Wrens.
..........
34
These tales and the criticism raised about and even against them reveal
Ambrose Bierce's stories, excluding his didactic tales which seek to
two points:
uphold a moral teaching,
for in
consistently present the world as inexplicable,
his stories the world constantly fluctuates and is malevolent in its elusiveness.
the malevolent nature
While critics recognize
of the worlds Bierce
they do not perceive the changing nature of those worlds.
attempt to interpret his stories according
constructs,
Instead, they
that the world is
to their perceptions
static.
The problem
articulated
with
by Logan,
such interpretations
of Bierce's short
Powers, Crane, Grenander,
stories as those
and others is that they are
postulated within the confines of the distinctly Western thought that time is
linear and defines the nature of human existence in the world.
must therefore
submit
their
interpretations
of narrative
to
Such critics
a monolithic
understanding of time outside the written text instead of considering that the
world is a product of words and that time is, in turn, defined by this product of
words.
In other words, since the world is in flux, time may be fluid.
As
Ricoeur explains, those "writing on time . . . usually overlook the contribution
of narrative to a critique of the concept of time.
They either look to cosmology
and physics to supply the meaning of time or they try to specify the inner
experience of time without
Time" 170).
any reference
on the sensual dream
and
activity"
("Narrative
Thus, in interpreting narrative, Western critics have relied upon
an absolute reality and the experience
theories,
to narrative
experience
Crane's postulate
of sensations.
or hallucination
that Peyton
Powers and Logan rely
for the formulation
of their
Farquhar has imposed a temporary
reality relies on the idea of sensation, for Crane assumes that even after
ry- *#Wpww
35
Farquhar dies, the character is still "sensing"
These
(desiring) in the heart.
critics have perpetuated the centrality of the spoken word in Western
They have retained a
philosophy contributing to a distrust of the written text.
"belief in some ultimate 'word', presence,
essence,
truth or reality,"
that which
"will act as the foundation of all our thought, language and experience . . . God,
the Idea, the World Spirit, the Self" have all been nominees for this role
(Eagleton 131).
Western metaphysics has used each candidate in an attempt to
identify the nature of being in language.
But Eagleton says the ambition is too
lofty since it requires that the suggestion itself be beyond that system, and no
candidate ever has been nor ever will be, for there is no singular idea which
is not a part of an unresolvable
together with elements
(131).
struggle for meaning in language,
woven
of other ideas and residue of previous ruminations
The problem is that this attempt to gain meaning uses what Eagleton
calls social ideologies to select interpretations and promote them to "privileged
positions," which literary critics use as the central tenet to which all other
meanings must submit (131).
"Sometimes," explains Eagleton,
"such meanings
.
are seen as the origin of others, the source from which they flow; but this . .
is a curious way of thinking, because for this meaning ever to have been
possible other signs must have already existed"
(131).
Taking for granted that "narrative occurs within
of instants,"
. . . a linear succession
as Ricoeur states the case ("Narrative Time"
170), leads modern
literary critics to a limited understanding of many of Bierce's short stories and
allows them only to conclude that his work is merely a "gulf separating
appearance from reality" (Woodruff 76).
I suggest that time in Bierce's short
stories cannot be understood clearly by critics and readers
who do not consider
36
that time may be other than
the conventionally
linear
defined
existence.
Blind acceptance of linear time allows for the definition of existence in nonprogressive
time fragments,
frozen time or fluid time, for without a linear
time frame, there would be no standard by which to make it non-linear.
readers, we treat time as linear when analyzing a text.
As
If we can disassemble
the whole of the text and place the various constituent elements into some sort
of categorical structure, we feel the story is acceptable.
We understand it.
But
all we are actually doing is constructing a formulation to eventually tear it
down again; then we can look back at the energy we have expended and
believe we have accomplished a great task.
We are reminded of Derrida's
deconstructionism and what appears to be its call for ultimate nothingness.
We have
But we have not even achieved an acknowledgment of nothingness.
only returned to
a text comprised
of constituent
elements,
because,
according
to Boman, "time is for us an abstraction since we distinguish time from the
events that occur in time" (139).
Boman explains that, in contrast to the way we perceive time, the
Israelites make no distinction between time and the events which occur in
time.
Instead, "for them time is determined by its content.
of the occurrence; it is the stream of events" (Boman 139).
Wiggins' suggestion concerning "An Occurrence
Time is the notion
In such light
at Owl Creek Bridge," that
"the detailed description must be revaluated not as objective reality, but as the
vividness of a psychological state-the truth that the mind makes its own
reality"
(25),
can thus provide an
even broader application
than
he intended.
We need to concern ourselves not only with a variety of psychological states
but also with a variety of worlds and the fluid nature of time as it changes
-- w-
37
from world to world.
much literature,
Thus, we might arrive at alternate interpretations to
not only Bierce's.
In a sense, the idea of a fluid time and a multitude of simultaneous
worlds is not new.
Jacob Neusner points out that Hebraic intertextuality, the
study of the written word, the holy books, provides insight into the Hebraic
identity of the past twenty centuries (The Way
of Torah 2).
It has not been
applied in the Western world, however, having been sacrificed by Plato and
post-Platonic thinkers for the sake of an entirely different way of thinking, as
we shall see in chapter 3.
CHAPTER III
BACKTRACKING: TWO LANGUAGES, TWO HERITAGES
In Genesis we are told that God created the heavens and earth.
heaven and earth we term the "world."
The
Then God said, "Let there be light"
(1:3), after which he saw that the light was good and separated the light from
Thus, we call the
He called the light "day" and the darkness "night."
the dark.
light "day" and the darkness "night" and term their passing the passing of
But attempts to understand time and the world have led to a great many
"time."
practical and theoretical debates.
If on Tuesday I
Consider the practical level.
were to promise to revitalize our long-neglected
friendship
by visiting you the
next day, you would anticipate my arrival at your home within the next 24 to
36 hours.
My arriving Friday with the explanation that as far as I am
concerned I had arrived on the designated "the next day," would be
unacceptable.
On the theoretical
We operate according to schedules, categories
more evident.
and delineations.
Concepts
level, the elusive natures of time and the world are
and definitions,
But such constructs may be merely society's own creations.
of time are constructed
and then deconstructed
for clarification.
Avoiding or ignoring the total construct, as when I chose to construct my own
chronology and put in my appearance after the 24- to 36-hour time allotted by
convention, results in chaos.
constructs.
We live according to our society's own
Having defined time as a linear progression
the world, we operate accordingly
with great conviction.
38
of instants through
When
contrary
ideas
39
concerning the nature of time arise, we raise our eyebrows and perhaps
theoretically
accordance
entertain
We, nevertheless,
the idea.
continue
with our initial construct defined by society
in
to operate
and the turning
of the
planets.
The underlying uncertainty
Ambrose
Bierce presents
which is a quality of life is precisely what
in his short stories with
"keen,
darting
fragments"
(Starrett 38) to force his readers to realize that such fragments make up their
Bierce tears down readers' constructs of the world and time to
own existence.
undermine the absolute, monolithic
Woodruff identifies
consciousness.
most significant
positions they enjoy in readers'
Bierce's
attacks on such constructs as his
device:
the great writer works with materials that have no tangible or
finite existence, nothing but the products of his own creative
imagination . . . .
They are mysteriously insubstantial "spirits of
dream," "existences not of earth," "the shadow and the portent."
(93)
The success of Bierce's work relies upon his awareness that the imagination is
independent of the everyday
physical
world.
Many of us in the Western hemisphere fail to acknowledge "materials
that have no tangible or finite existence." That is, we distrust the products of
our own imagination.
So we pretend that time and the world are ipso facto and
not merely a creative imagination's products.
This distrust results from Plato's
initiation of the Greek Enlightenment when "the original unity of word and
thing,
4).
speech
and
thought,
discourse
and truth
[was]
disrupted"
(Handelman
No longer do we perceive words to have an essence of their own.
developed
a system of signs to relate the physical
We have
world to the metaphysical
40
beyond.
"Unless
it can have no
semiotics confronts this relationship,
relevance to the world of practical affairs with its confident assumptions
about
'reality,' and it cannot account for the role of semiotic systems in that world"
The nature of this relationship between semiosis and
(Hodge and Kress 23).
the world has raised
concerning
questions
the natures
and the world, and their relationships to one another.
of language,
thought
According to Hodge and
Kress, Saussure succeeded in establishing "the sign . . . in a realm between
[the] two material planes" of the signifier, which refers, and the signified,
Saussure's work confirms Plato's theory of language
which is referred to (24).
as identifying signs (Hodge and Kress 24-25).
While not merely
semioticians,
Ricoeur
and Heidegger
have developed
philosophies attempting to identify the nature of time and narrative.
And
Boman has identified in Hebraic thought a similar understanding of time.
"Narrative Time" (1980), Paul Ricoeur states that "anti-narrativist
In
writers in
the field of historiography and . . . structuralists in the field of literary
criticism" place too much emphasis on "nomological models" and
"paradigmatic codes" (171).
This emphasis "results in a trend that reduces the
narrative component to the anecdotic surface of the story" (171) based on the
assumption that time is always laid out progressively and as a punctiliar
chronology.
Riceour protests that the dualism between narrative
human experience conceived by some philosophers
function and
is a misrepresentation
time (170).
Says Ricoeur, "I agree with Heidegger that the ordinary re-
presentation
of time as a linear series of 'nows' hides the true constitution
time . . ." (171).
of
Boman, too, believes the linear concept of time is inaccurate
"since the points on any single line are coexistent"
tfbsppTb
of
9-
i-----,.ll.---"-..,-,-,l
(142).
Boman suggests:
41
"Since the points on any single line are coexistent, it is completely
Both Ricoeur and Boman
inappropriate to illustrate time as a line" (142).
prefer to define time in terms of a nonprogressive
to the Hebrews' round dances and accompanying
Boman refers
experience.
rotation as an example of the
This
rhythm which for them is "the great reality" of the world and time (134).
idea of rhythmic
time, however,
is very
different from
Westerners'
of time.
understanding
Semiotics has by no means succeeded
in resolving this issue concerning
the relationship between language, or a system of signs, and the world or time,
although it has succeeded in raising significant questions
literary theory, especially in its study of narratives.
as Prince explains it, not only
narratology,
a narrative, but also
paraphrase
getting at" ("Pragmatics" 529).
and
"what the narrator is
Authorial intent can be understood to be
and can provide an excuse for the
assumption that there exists a content
Smith
For example, structuralist
attempts to summarize
attempts to specify
synonymous with meaning, however,
ideal message.
about these issues in
outside the
communication
is the
which
Such a perception promotes the dualism which Herrnstein
questions.
Any attempt to interpret a given message requires that both
interlocutors
engage in the same system of communication,
semiotic structure.
writing
using the same
Chris Hutchison states this principle in terms of the
act:
The writer is pretending that, or acting as though, the rules
constitutive
of making
assertions,
have been complied with.
giving descriptions,
and
so
on,
That is, he is pretending that he commits
42
himself to the truth of the expressed proposition, that there is
evidence for the truth of the proposition, and that he is able to supply
(7)
such evidence, and that he believes the proposition to be true.
These principles have been articulated by H. Paul Grice in "Logic and
Conversation"
(45-58).
as
the
definitive
Nevertheless,
for maximum
format
many writers deliberately
complied.
without
constitutive
rules
flout these principles to
asserts and
with
which
readers
have
unknowingly
Because stories are in the form of a written text, readers have very
little to say about the communication
trust it.
communication
Clearly, Bierce deliberately
achieve a desired effect upon readers.
describes
effective
construct; they either trust it or do not
If they do not, they probably will not read it.
indication of a belief in what the writer presents.
Reading a text is an
Althought it is doubtful that
Bierce commits himself "to the truth of the expressed proposition,"
readers
believe the writer has made such a commitment because they believe he is
attempting to communicate
maximally
and efficiently.
not attempt to define truth or provide
However,
Bierce does
He
"evidence" to substantiate truth.
merely questions what is commonly accepted as truth without providing
answer to the question.
readers.
an
Many times what Bierce presents is not acceptable to
All too often they find they have invested in what they had perceived
to be the setting up of a truth, or at least a possible truth, only to discover at
the end of the story that even the author undermines that "truth" he had set
up.
Indeed, the success of many of Bierce's
at the end that the foregoing
structure
stories relies upon the revelation
is fractured
communication.
Readers
trust Bierce until the end, and then they feel cheated and quite often refuse to
read him again since they do not trust him anymore.
43
Hutchison
states:
"The writer uses words with their normal
meanings,
Hutchison's
but their connection with the world is only pretended" (8).
statement implies that there is a world outside of words to which words must
normally connect,
an implication again based on the
However,
monolith of an absolute world.
in
the
next
arbitrarily defined
Hutchison does qualify his statement
paragraph:
If the pretence applies to the rules for the making of an assertion,
then the set of conventions that the writer of fiction invokes
requires
that his readers
with him in imagining
collude
that the
world is such that, or that there is a possible world such that, it meets
necessary for the sentences
all the conditions
sincere,
non-defective
assertions.
he utters to constitute
(8)
However, Bierce does not so much assume that he has presented a possible
world as much as he assumes he has indicated that what appears to be the
world we live in is not necessarily so.
His careful attention to the techniques
of realism appear to provide readers with the objective, coherent world to
But by the time the narrative concludes, it is
which they already ascribe.
easily recognized that he has not presented any such world.
"the capable writer gives [fiction] not a moment's
Bierce wrote that
attention, except to make
what is related seem probable in the reading-seem true," for "nothing is so
improbable as what is true" ("Works"
10:247).
Wiggins suggests that Bierce
"does not seek . . . to convince his readers that such goings-on are true" (34).
He is right; Bierce only makes such goings on seem real but in doing so does
not insist they are real.
that
Davidson agrees:
one cannot distinguish
"The narrative
between perceived
and
method itself implies
imagined
events"
(16),
and
44
"the world in Bierce's stories is a projected subjectivity" (84).
She points out
that in Bierce's essay on the short story he "discredits the idea that literature
should be grounded in the mundane and the explicable"
difficult for readers only because the readers
Bierce's work is
(115).
have placed the narratives
their own context of the world without considering
the validity
them in a different context, one contrary to the typical Western
in
of placing
context.
Instinctively they have sought the explicable and the logical, and sought it
along a linear temporality.
They have attempted to define the stories in terms
of a logical proof and a hiercharchy of predicates, one based on another.
Readers believe Aristotle's claim in his Metaphysica, "To say what is is and
what is not is not is the true definition of truth and falsehood conversely"
(1011.626f).
To this point, I have been focusing on the problems inherent
studies of semiotics and narrative.
in the
My goal has been to raise questions
concerning the validity of what we take for granted.
Now I wish to review the
impact of Greek philosophy on the development of Western thought
concerning language in an effort to identify the root of the problems
inherent in the studies
of semiotics and narrative.
I will highlight Western
thought by comparing it to Hebraic thought, a system of thought which has
remained unaffected by Plato's theory that what we experience in the world is
but a shadow of reality.
What the Hebrews term "the world"
is different from
what we call the world, and their understanding of time is just as unique as
ours.
Handelman
simply is (4).
"JIWAVAKOWAORM
explains that
western thought
has
determined
that what
In his Cratylus Plato suggests that words, or names, are signs
is,
45
merely for the forms of things,
In
since real things cannot be apprehended.
doing so he raises the question of the accuracy of names and determines that
Plato
names contain no truth; they are merely tools used to signify meaning.
was more concerned
with whether or not the
represented
name properly
the
form of the object than he was with apprehending the essence of the word, for
he did not conceive of the word as containing its own truth.
Understanding is
outside language and occupies the "intelligible sphere, so that ever since in all
discussion on language, the concept of the image (eikon) has been replaced by
that of sign (semeia)- which is not just a terminological
an
epoch-making
374).
decision
about
thought
change, but expresses
language"
concerning
Thus, words do not signify but only name true being.
then this
. . . ,"
linear hierarchical
Instead, truth is
To recognize truth,
thought to be apprehended in logic outside of language.
one need only use reason to construct
(Gadamer
a syllogistic proof.
Thinking "If this,
the correct formula of predicates, will reveal a progressive and
relationship.
Aside from what the
word stands for, there
exists no value in the word.
Eventually Christian doctrine reflected the search for truth in logic
(Handelman 100).
Handelman explains that Philo, "the first to wed philosophy
and Scripture" (93), made "logos something identical with the essence of God.
From Plato he took the idea that all things are created by logos
(i.e., a reason)
and a divine knowledge which comes from God, thus making logos
equivalent to the divine mind, and a first principle,
(100).
Thus,
something
or instrument of creation"
although the first chapter of John states that "In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (1:1) and "All
things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being
46
that has come into being" (1:3), Christians tend to interpret
another name for God, not as the essence of God.
"Word" as simply
God and word are now
So develops the belief that language must be transcended,
divorced.
and, as
Handelman points out, Socrates is led to hypothesize, "How real existence is to
be discovered is, I suspect, beyond you and me-we must rest content with the
admission that the knowledge of things is not to be derived from names" (5).
Handelman concludes that while for the Hebrews there is nothing
outside the sign, no metaphysical realm, Western thought is based on
of metaphor, which relies on a distinction between
Aristotle's theory
"sensible" or "literal" and the "nonsensible" or "figurative" (16).
the
Indeed,
Handelman says that the Platonic transfer of the soul from the visible to the
invisible world is the basis for the entire ontological tradition of Western
metaphysics and results in movement from the literal to the figurative instead
of movement from the nonsensible to the sensible (16).
unlike Western thought, has remained
Eastern thought,
uninfluenced by these Greek ideas.
Rabbinic thought holds that the relations between various levels of meaning
are more immanent
aspects of one another than elements in a hierarchically
ordered progression (Handelman 28-29).
Yahweh, the Hebrew God, does not
simply exist in stasis but spoke His being, and in His utterance the Hebrews
hear and experience His Being (Handelman 17).
The text, the divine word, was
the means for the provision of the relationship, not the visualizing of a sign.
Thus, "the realm of language retains its physis, its concreteness, and is
(Handelman
preserved"
Because
Handelman
-,
-t
Christian
20).
thought developed
says it is "predominantly
I MAW-
lexical
on the
Greek
foundation,
and metaphorical,
whereas
the
47
Rabbinic mode [is] predominantly propositional
While
(55).
and metonymical"
the literal and the metaphorical exist in both traditions, they are used
differently
within
the
two
traditions.
In
Greco-Christian
thought,
metaphor
depends on a resemblance resulting in a transfer of one word or idea to
another word or idea (Handelman 16).
identification,
and cancellation"
This results in "substitution, election,
(Handelman
55);
thus,
however
differences,
slight, between the first and second word or idea are effaced.
Containing no
essence of its own because it contained only words without essence, the
written composition ceased to provide any definition of meaning.
Ultimately,
Christians rejected the relevance of what Handelman calls "verbal pattern"
(32) to replace the value of the written text with the revelation
word become flesh (John 1:14).
of Christ, the
The apostle Paul converted from Judaism to
Christianity to preach the ultimate fulfillment of all words in Christ.
But the
Jews repudiated his message that Jesus was Messiah (Acts 13:46), and the news
divided the Greeks (Acts 14:2).
"For the Jews," Paul writes, "demand signs and
the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to
Jews and folly to Gentiles" (I Cor. 1:22-23).
And so, as Handelman points out, to
convince both Jews and Greeks of the truth of the new creed, Paul used
language to create truths that would reach both (84):
To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews; to those under the
law I became as one under the law-though not being myself under
the law-that I might win those under the law.
To those outside the
law [Greeks] I became as one outside the law-that I might win those
outside the law . . . .
9:20-22)
I have become all things to all men . . . .
(I Cor.
48
Because Paul believed that the power of language was in its essence, he
believed the proclamation of his creed would mean one thing to Hebrews and
another to Greeks.
Paul's letter to the Greeks at Colossae declares Jesus as
Christ, the Messiah "the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all
creation"
(Col 1.15).
Boman says Paul's statement can be interpreted in Greek
thought to mean "that Christ is the becoming visible on earth of the invisible
God" (121).
But Boman points out that while the Hebrews did not accept Jesus as
Christ, the Messiah, the verse can have meaning for them, too, in the sense
that their Messiah is "the aggregate qualities" of God (Boman 121).
remains the same
although, as regards
form, the interpretations
"The sense
are opposites"
(Boman 121).
As both Boman and Handelman explain, the world is objective for the
Greeks, a given quantity easily apprehended
sight.
with the
senses, particularly
Only what is seen is of concern to Greeks, and they communicate
nothing else (Boman 113).
Post-Platonic Greeks tell no stories and do not
narrate verbosely (Handelman
33).
They avoid impressions
and concentrate
merely on what can be apprehended through sight (Boman 113).
paraphrases Plato:
"Perception is of decisive significance
Boman
for philosophy,
all our concepts, including that of time, are given through sight" (115).
for
For
Plato, god and the divine can been seen; Boman says Plato "tried above all to
see the eternal and the invisible" (119).
The Hebraic world is not so objective.
The Hebrews' language differs radically from the Greeks'.
Boman explains,
"The Israelite-oriental
In fact,
conception of the word is formally the
opposite of the Greek conception . . . " in the sense that it effects power (58).
That is, for the Hebrews, the word is true being and is not merely an element
49
This is evident, as Boman notes (58), in the book of Jeremiah in
"'My word, is it not like a fire,! A hammer that shatters the
Hebraic scriptures:
Boman points out that it is impossible for the Hebrews to
rocks?"' (23:29).
identify a distinction between the word and the voice of Yahweh,
"for word
signifies the power- though sense-laden utterances of God while the 'voice'
represents above all God's working through the powers of nature.
.
" (Boman 58).
"It [is] a mighty and dynamic force . .
.
of a system of signs to represent being.
For the
Hebrews . . . 'voice' signifies the sound of the speech [only], but 'word' means
the utterance or what is said itself" (Boman 60).
The Hebrews understand that
the utterance is singular, separate from the voice.
Because it is divorced from
the act of speaking, the utterance is not related to sound.
perception, but utterance
and word
are essentially
Sound is auditory
synonymous.
This idea that the essence of being is inherent in the word allows the
Hebrews to attach to the word the power of evocation.
Psalm 33:9 reads, "For he
spoke, and it came to be; he commanded and it stood forth."
typical for the Hebrews since
"it is characteristic of the Hebrews that their
The Greek word merely is
words effect . . . ." (Boman 69).
initiate or activate (Boman 69).
The scripture is
and cannot therefore
While the Greek logos only represents and
boasts no creative energy, the Hebrew dabhar defines God and the Hebrews by
action experienced by dabhar.
"The action of the Hebrew noun is active,
dynamic, visible, and palpable . . . while the action of the Ideas is like the
effect of a magnet or of the sun, passive and impalpable but still real enough"
(Boman 72).
intersection
Boman uses the following diagram to illustrate
between
mental life" (68):
two
entirely
different
ways
"the point of
of conceiving
of the highest
50
drive forward
gather, arrange
speak, reckon,
speak
think
Word
Reason
Deed
From Thorlief Boman's Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960, p. 68.
The above diagram
communication,
illustrates that word (dabhar, logos), central to all
is perceived differently
by the Greeks and the Hebrews.
Starting at the top left and descending diagonally, we see energy displayed in
speech and resulting in a deed.
language operates.
This is the typical Hebraic perception of how
From the top right descending diagonally, we follow the
course of word in speech through a series of stages that never leave the
intellectual realm.
This is the Greek perception of how language operates.
There is no translation of the spoken or written word into the physical realm.
In other words, there
is no
as the Greeks are concerned.
active creative power inherent in language, as far
Boman explains that the Hebrew word shem
51
means "name" but can be understood to mean Yahweh's
appearance
difference between the two is not great for the Hebrews.
For them, sh em
means the sum total of Yahweh's qualities and activities.
"When men see God's
since the
acts, they see in them God so far as he is knowable to men-, his essence and his
qualities
.
.
.
.
In the name of the covenant-God his person is met face to face
and his action is experienced" (Boman 106).
In the Hebrew mind, to refer to God's acts is to refer to God.
always the act of one mind . . . " (Boman 69).
Testament religion
"Dabhar is
Indeed, "The great men of Old
are depicted not because of their piety or their heroism but
because God has acted in them or has spoken to them by acting, or like Ezra
because he is reading God's word . . . the invisible being of his God is made
visible in his acts
through which he also speaks" (Boman 113).
perception is metonymic.
Such a
Metonymy is defined as the use of the name of one
thing for that of another associated with or suggested by it; the word
metonymy comes from the Greek term me tonymia, a change of name
(Webster's
New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, deluxe Second edition, 1983).
Today metonymy is allowed to do duty for the definition of synecdoche as well
(Webster's New Int'l. Dictionary, Second edition, 1934).
Metonymy is a pervasive principle in Hebraic thought.
inherent within their art.
It is even found
Boman points out that while the pagan paints or
sculpts the form of his god, the Hebrew paints or sculpts "the symbol of God's
word: the Torah shrine and lamp or else the action of his God and so the sacred
history.
He does not employ God's image . . . " in his artwork (113).
Greeks sought beauty in the representation
of stasis, the Hebrews
activity of impressions left on the senses to construct beauty.
While the
relied on the
Plato defined
art
52
as
a mirror,
and the Greek artists were naturalists
impressions of nature.
and realists
reflecting
their
But for the Israelites "the beautiful needed to have no
graceful, harmonious form.
They found the highest beauty in the formless"
(Boman
concerned
89)
and
representations.
were more
with
impressions
and sensations than
Says Boman, "The Israelite poets are impressionists;
repeat only their impressions," not the logic or reason of form (87).
they
But this is
not to say that that which is visible has no meaning for the Israelites.
On the
contrary, perhaps they attach even more value to physical objects than the
Greeks do, for they perceive
"comprehensible
each material thing as having inherently
content" (Boman 90).
Thus, the significance
of the physical
object is not its form nor its mimetic property but rather its essence.
of Solomon 5:13 we read:
a
In Song
"His cheeks are like a bed of balsam,/ Banks of sweet-
scented herbs;/ His lips are lilies,/ Dripping with liquid myrrh."
out that we tend to subordinate "sense-impressions,"
Boman points
and "there is obviously in
that judgement a disparagement which is connected with the fact that for us
they do
stand on the second level.
sense-impressions
For the Israelites, however, the secondary
are basic and decisive, and for this reason they should
properly be called primary" (Boman 87).
The images in Song of Solomon
attributed to the face of a lover are replaced by others within the scripture as
well.
"As one image . . . can be applied to various parts of the body, so the same
part of the body can be represented by two or three groups of images; hence
the breasts
(Boman
are called towers (8.10),
fawns (7.4), and date-clusters
(7.8)"
83).
The ability to represent various parts of the lover's body with one image
raises an interesting point.
It is easy to assume that what is displayed in Song
53
of Solomon is metaphor and simile.
Indeed, Boman says "So natural was it for
the Hebrews to think and speak in metaphors and similes that the exegetes
forget it occasionally and substitute the direct meaning for the image"
(91).
But, like Handelman, Boman stresses the predominance of metonymy in
Hebrew thinking and devotes much energy in his book to discussing the
"universal concept" of the Israelite's thinking (70).
"Hebrews always see the
general," he says and proceeds to explain that "the particular individual is
only a manifestation of the regnant type . . . nor is the abstract separated from
the concrete" (70-71).
Thus, it is difficult to describe the foregoing
descriptions as metaphorical.
characteristic
If each of the previous images is merely one
of the lover's body and can be transferred to represent yet
another part of the lover's body, the idea does not exist that one image
substitutes one part of the body.
Even so, one must remember that
representation is not physical as much as essential.
The fact that the lover's
lips are lilies and drip with myrrh does not merely comment on the nature of
the lover's lips but comments on the nature of the lover as well.
While
representation is a part of Hebrew thinking, substitution is not.
This point
clearly
differentiates
Greek from Hebrew thought.
rely on mimesis and representation;
This property is distinctly Greek.
they
Metaphor or substitution
are not a part of Hebrew thought.
Metonymy, the use of a word or phrase to
refer not to itself but to something associated
with it, is characteristically
Hebrew and affords an explanation of the foregoing passage from Song of
Solomon.
It is not so much that the lips of the singer's lover are like lilies as
much as it is that that part of lilies which she appreciates, their beauty, is also
a part of her lover.
While we employ words to visualize, the Israelites employ
I
54
words
to
express
their
impressions,
neglecting
the
"photographic
appearance"
of the object (Boman 74).
But because Jewish divinity is not located in being but in language, for
God is the word (John 1:1), contiguity, juxtaposition
and association provide the
foundation for the Rabbinic idea that thing and word are never distinct and
the
resemblance
metaphor,
never effaces
difference.
Handelman
explains
that the
is replaced by the "how much more so," the metonymical,
of likeness dependent upon possibility, an if (53).
only possible.
Possibility
is, the
a relation
always remains
It cannot become a certainty because the relationship between
word and idea is not one of metaphorical substitution.
never cancelled (Handelman 54).
Aristotle's hierarchy;
there
Thus, the literal is
There are no categorical statements as in
are no
proofs precluding
further discussion;
there
is no absolute truth outside of the word and its never ending possibilities.
Conclusions
are
application,
revision,
always relative
and subject to further interpretation,
and extension
(Handelman
and multiple meanings exist simultaneously,
39).
Various interpretations
resulting from this what if,
propositional mode of thought.
These distinctions
between the manner in which Westerners
and
Hebrews perceive the nature of language affect the roles time plays in the two
cultures.
It stands to reason that, within the Western tradition of hierarchical,
predicative thought, time would be conceived of as linear and progressive, a
series of events.
And, naturally, within the Hebraic tradition of shifting
ambiguous thought, time would be conceived of as fluid.
Boman calls it "the
stream of events" (139), but perhaps the image of the sea with its vast depths
and rhythmic returns is a better likeness.
The impact that this distinction has
55
on the
study of narratives,
particularly
Bierce's,
which
utilize
"keen,
darting
fragments" (Starrett 38) and not logical constructs, warrants a deeper study of
the two perceptions of time.
H. G. Ruthrof agrees with Herrnstein Smith that an understanding
of
the totality of the narrative text is critical to deriving meaning from the
narrative itself.
He states, "To be able to determine the story's authorial
narrative situation, we must first consider the spatial and temporal locus of the
point of view from which the presented world is seen" (47).
Gerald Prince
echoes this idea when he stresses the significance of the order of presentation
in any study of a narrative ("Narrative Analysis"
reveal is the importance we attach to space.
themselves
existing within
an encapsulated
182).
What such statements
For Westerners,
who perceive
space which holds
together,
identifies, and categorizes everything, space is, in part, a definition of time
(Boman 137).
But, for the Hebrews, space provides a definition for existence
without any regard to the nature of time, for space has never commenced and
will never end.
Because universality
dominates the Israelites' thinking and an
individual
is only one
psychical
content contributes to a "collective consciousness"
element of the whole,
each
individual's
experiences
and
(Boman 70-71).
This consciousness can be understood to be spatial, for such a consciousness,
like space, never commenced and will never end, comprising the entire life of
the people like a container which stores the people's whole life from
childhood on, as well as the realities which they and those before them
experienced (Boman
137).
Handelman
echoes Boman:
"Past, present,
and
future are simultaneously bound together in . . . an indivisible whole" (36).
such, events within a whole are also seen as wholes themselves.
Boman
As
56
explains that this unity of events
of a linear progression:
cannot be severed or even
analyzed in terms
"It is essentially inadmissible to break up or analyse
this unity into a series of segments or rapidly consecutive points of time"
(Boman 138).
Here we see again that points do not constitute being.
Instead,
the rhythm of the life cycle, like the Hebrews' round dances and
accompanying
(Boman
134).
successive
rotation,
never ends and is "the great reality"
While their repercussions
deeds, the events themselves
of the
world
can be mitigated or augmented by
are without variation and become
essential elements of the people's identity (Boman 138).
Boman goes on to say:
"It is clear what meaning God's consciousnessness must have had for the
Hebrews; the life of a man encompasses a small part of the history of existence,
the life of a people a greater part, the life of humanity a still greater part, but
the life of God encompasses everything" (139).
Hebrews necessarily perceive
Thus, as Boman points out, the
God's consciousness as universal, too, a world
itself in which all events are immutable and eternal (139).
So, even while the
Hebrews live in time, "time distinctions play a very trifling role for them"
(Boman
138).
The distinction between Hebrew and Greek senses of time is that one is
"clear and exact" and one "unclear and inconsistent"
(Boman 142).
The European sense of time is a confused mixture of images (thus not
only expressions) that we involuntarily make of time, as, for example,
when we say:
The future lies before us, the past lies behind us.
should be clear to everyone, however,
that time neither lies,
nor is, but goes, comes, and becomes.
(Boman 142)
It
stands,
57
Hebrew verb tenses do not and cannot reflect time as our tenses can
do not
work within our framework
future).
of three
time-spheres
(past,
since they
present,
and
While Westerners visualize themselves astride the straight line
"time," the Hebrews do not.
Westerners direct their gaze forward to the future
and turn to peer over their shoulders to the past to define verb tenses by
means of any one of a series of points dispersed along this time line (Boman
145).
But this time line is not used in Semitic verb tenses, for their verb tenses
only communicate
the status of action, whether it has been completed,
engaged in, or will be completed (Boman 144).
is being
Since the shortest time in
Hebrew is a rhythm, a beat, and "not a point [on a line], nor a distance, nor a
duration,"
lines have no place in Hebraic thought (Boman
Because
their spatial images have not become
136).
entrenched in time,
Hebrew images and expressions for time are "simple, clear, and without inner
contradictions"
(Boman
142).
place of duree, duration,
Hebrew thought.
independent
Temps can be translated by the word time, but in
Boman prefers
the term "occurrence"
to explain
But he explains that by "occurrence" he does not mean an
event.
Instead, he thinks of occurrence
as "everything
that can
occur or be accomplished in time, [and leaves] all concrete content out of
account, [to] have left the notion of pure occurrence"
(144).
Boman points out
that from the Western viewpoint such an understanding of time is easily
considered
"timeless because
from our view point it lacks the 'spatializing'
of
our 'time'" (144).
Aristotle
defined
line or a linear line.
"objective,
physical,
time as progressive
movement
along either
a circular
As Boman explains, the circular line is used to represent
astronomical
and measurable
time"
while
the
linear line
58
is used to represent "the grammatical time of past, present,
and future in
which are laid those actions we express in temporal terms" (125-126).
critical here
is that both representations
time according to the metaphor of a line.
presentation
and spatial
'Western ontology
and temporal
because
reveal Westerners'
locus
such an ontology
in narrative
is
inherent
of
in
rests upon Aristotle's legacy,
is debatable since the Hebrews effectively
yet do not believe that spatial
perception
This emphasis on order of
emphasis upon logic and the hierarchy that supports it.
a legacy
What is
and temporal concerns
the
But the value of such
construct narratives
are
and
relevant to narrative.
For the Jews, the "text is not . . . a material thing located in a single space and
circumscribed
by a quantifiable time" (Handelman
37).
Because of its creative
powers, the original holy Torah, God's word, boasts no bounds (Handelman 39).
The physical text is only the embodiment or enclothing of this metaphysical
original holy Torah (Handelman 38).
"The Torah is not seen as a speculation
about the world, but part of its very essence" (Handelman 38).
The all-
embracing unity of the Torah is the "underlying structure of reality"
and "all
aspects of existence can be seen as ramifications of and connected to the
Torah"
(Handelman
(Boman 139).
consequences
abiding facts
Handelman's ideas echo Boman when he says, "The
of events can be altered, but the events themselves can never be
altered" (126).
Boman
39); events are indestructible historically
Nothing is allowed to be "irrelevant" or outside its scope.
states this principle
even more succinctly
when he explains that
dabhar means not only "word" but also "deed" (as thing): ". . . 'word' is in itself
not only sound and breath but a reality.
accomplishment,
Since the word is connected
that dabhar could be translated 'effective
with its
word' (Tatwort);
59
our term 'word' is thus a poor translation for the Hebrew dabhar, because for
us 'word' never includes the deed within it" (Boman 66).
It is critical to note that the idea of dabhar as thing is not merely that of
substance or being; it is more the essence of the world (Handelman 3).
The
power of the Hebrew word defines the nature of the man who utters it; it is so
powerful as to be perceived as the "highest and noblest function of a man" and
"identical with his action . . . the deed is the consequence of the basic meaning
inhering in dabhar"
while not separating
(Boman 65).
Nevertheless, Boman goes on to say that
word from deed, the Israelites
still experience
the failure
of promising words, "not in the fact that the man produced only words
deeds, but in the fact that he brought forth a counterfeit
and no
word, an empty word,
or a lying word which did not possess the inner strength and truth for
accomplishment
or
accomplished
something
evil"
(65-66).
While Greek language developed definite verb-forms to identify past,
present, and future along a linear chronology, Hebrew did not.
The Israelite
sees more in words than the images called forth by a mimetic language.
He
sees God, a living essential matter, whose consciousness makes up the world
and simultaneously creates the world.
This basic difference between
perceptions of language has had a profound impact upon the method of textual
interpretation.
Traditional Western interpretation has conceived of the text as
an artifact requiring a peeling away to gain meaning and an absolute
hidden by the words comprising the text.
textual
inherent
interpretation
within the
relies upon
words
the
comprising
In contrast, the Hebraic concept of
understanding
the
truth
text,
and
that truth
textual
is
an
essence
interpretation
is
60
not a peeling away but a progressive unfolding of the various meanings
constituted entirely by the words of the text.
CHAPTER IV
AMBROSE BIERCE AND TRADITIONAL HEBRAIC INTERTEXTUALITY
One of the main objectives in applying any type of analysis to literature
is to gain insight into how we understand or react to a piece of literature in
the manner we do.
Our perceptions
of language
perceptions of a piece of literature.
cannot help influencing
our
While Bierce's short stories have received
less attention than they merit, that which they have received is due in great
part to the stories'
language.
so would
successful manipulation
of readers' preconceptions
about
It stands to reason if our perceptions of language were to change,
our perceptions of Bierce's writings.
As has already been pointed out, both the nature of time and the nature
of narrative are critical elements of Ambrose Bierce's writing and affect
readers' interpretations of the world in those stories.
evaluate
In this chapter, I shall
each of the five stories in this study according to, first, the nature of
time; second, the nature
of language;
fourth, the nature of discourse.
alternate realities
represented
third, the nature
of narrative;
and,
These observations will allow us to formulate
in the short stories and integrate
them with
what the Hebrews identify as readers' texts to create a much larger, more fluid
text
not
achievable
within
the confines
of traditional
literary
critical
theory.
But first, I will address Bierce's concept of the function of language in order to
clarify how he uses words and manipulates the language of his stories to
create
for readers
move
beyond
an unusual
their
reading
preconceptions
experience
regarding
61
which
language.
requires
them
to
62
Ambrose Bierce advocated:
without them" ("Works" 10:59).
are simultaneously
contrary
and
inherent
to others',
reductive
such
"We think in words.
Thus, the terms we use to express our concepts
within our thoughts.
as Jakobson's
self-regulating
We cannot think
entity
Such a view
of language is
that language
is
contention
characterized
by
interrelatedness
governed by laws of structural integration (Davidson 9).
out, "To reduce an act of communication
a complete
and
As Davidson points
to its essential elements as Roman
Jakobson does . . . would have no meaning for Bierce" (9).
She explains that
Bierce is more concerned with the polysemous nature of words and the
ambiguity of any communication.
The themes in Bierce's
upon
and
words
which
formulaically
hierarchically
stories are not built
represent
truth.
Remember, he is very much interested in relating the impossible, and this is
why he declares, "'Fiction has nothing to say to probability"'
31).
the
(qtd. in Wiggins
If words can only represent, there is nothing with which to communicate
impossible.
Handelman
explains
that traditionally
the Hebrews perceived
any event
as a coherent whole instead of consisting of a series of independent factors
which, when combined, create a constituency.
intertextuality."
concept.
together
"Again, melody
This idea is termed "Hebraic
is a most accurate
In melody, past, present, and future are
in rhythmic
alternation
representation
of this
simultaneously bound
and an indivisible
whole.
Modern
literature
has many parallels to this type of time consciousness, most obviously in the
stream-of-conciousness
stories
unaware
employ
readers
this
technique"
(Handelman
stream-of-consciousness
along
within
a character's
36).
Many
technique
thoughts
and
and
of Bierce's
often
invite
carry
the
short
63
perception of the story as an indivisible whole.
Bierce readies us for his use of
this technique in the first section of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
when he states, "As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words,
were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it the
captain nodded to the sergeant" (11).
Readers are informed of the fact that
they are presently to begin to follow the thoughts of the "doomed man" and
that what appears to be movement from present to past and back again is
really the activity of Farquhar's mind and all in the present.
Although the
Hebrews conceived of the text as an element of the universe, they conceived of
the text as making up the world as well.
The Jewish Torah, the text, the word, is
the "underlying structure of reality; all aspects of existence can be seen as
ramifications of and connected to the Torah" (Handelman 39).
said that stream-of-consciousness
Thus, it could be
in the short story echoes the Hebraic idea
that the words which make up a text can also make up a character's reality, as
well as a reader's reality insofar as a reader is carried along by that
character's
thoughts.
To embrace such a view while interpreting the
structure of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" allows readers to consider
Peyton Farquhar's
literary
experience
interpretation
outside
and invites
the traditional
a completely
Western
different
metaphysics of
reading
from those
reached by Logan, Power, and Crane.
To understand the process of removing oneself from this traditional
mode of interpretation, consider Ricoeur's claim that "the art of storytelling is
not so much a way of reflecting on time as a way of taking it for granted"
("Narrative Time"
175).
To deconstruct the story, or to discover the
signification of a text "by the careful teasing out of warring forces of
64
signification
within the text itself' (Johnson in Dissemination xiv), one must
take for granted the structure of time in "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
instead of reflecting on it.
the narrative
Initial preoccupation
is linear or nonlinear is secondary
with whether chronology in
to whether
the narrative
can
be understood in the Hebraic sense of intertextuality, for if this is the case, the
entire consideration of time is irrelevant since time is to be taken for granted.
What becomes more important is an ontological question, whether the death of
Peyton
Farquhar
actually
occurs.
Like time in Bierce's stories,
several narrative techniques can be
analyzed from the Rabbinic perspective to explain their function in "An
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."
The significance Bierce attributes to words
and his anti-Aristotelian view that words are more than signs is akin to the
Rabbinic
concept
that interpretation
is from
sense to sense,
not from
sensible (i.e., the signifier) to the nonsensible (i.e., the signified).
no opposing poles to move between.
progressive interpretation.
Handelman points out that, in "From Work to Text,"
upon the reader for its perfection (50).
is also "inadvertently
text as variegated and reliant
She goes on to say that Barthes'
Rabbinic
sensibility" (50).
"the theory of the text can coincide only with the activity
This principle functions on various levels.
same words parallels the character's usage
constituent of another text, the readers'.
Barthes states that
of writing" (81).
The way Peyton Farquhar uses
words creates his world and becomes a text in itself.
independent of Farquhar's.
There are
Instead, the movement is into the text, a
Roland Barthes defines the post-structuralist
definition
the
The way readers use the
and in the process becomes
a
However, this text can be said to be
We must believe it when we are told that Farquhar
65
"was now in full possession of his physical senses" and that "they were, indeed,
preternaturally
keen and
alert," that "something in the awful disturbance
of
his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of
things never before perceived"
his text.
(14).
Such was Farquhar's experience;
this is
Our experience is, to a great extent, his experience, at least until we
reach the end of the story and obtain more words which enlarge ours.
When
added to our text, these new words at the end of the story, "Peyton Farquhar
was dead . . . " (18), contribute to another possibility, a what might be.
Bierce's
conviction
Logan's
that words are beyond simple signifiers would substantiate
postulate that Bierce knew what he was doing, that the author deliberately
puts "Biercean metonymy [to] work" in the story (106) and that the story
"explores or exploits epistemological issues and the logic upon which this
epistemology
rests" (102).
This metonymy, something referred to by means of
a related thing, is thus made quite evident; Farquhar's interpretations of the
words he uses and our interpretation
experience
is complete
compose the whole text.
Farquhar's
reality for him, but for readers Farquhar's reality is
simply a metonymic element of our reality.
Each interpretation is an
association for the entire verbal exchange, but only for us.
For Peyton
Farquhar, his words and their experience comprise the entirety of his text.
Thus, metonymy is well represented.
There is therefore no distortion of an
absolute reality in the story as many critics argue, but merely a variety of
interpretations
of the
story,
each
valid,
understandable,
and
simultaneous.
Closely aligned with the principle of metonymy, the principle of
juxtaposition
is central to Rabbinic thought and is also a part of Ambrose
Bierce's narrative technique.
Juxtaposition
is the position of being side
by
66
side or close together.
The strength of juxtaposition "rests on the powers of
two confronted objects, both of which lead in spite of their differing positions
to equal consequences" (Kunst 986).
Handelman defines juxtaposition "as a
display of something which is and is not, or existing on the boundary of the
same and the different" (53).
For example, in the first sentence of the third
section of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," we are told that as Peyton
Farquhar fell from the bridge, he "was as one already dead" (13).
And yet we
read in the next sentence, "From this state he was awakened . . . " (13).
Farquhar "was as one already dead" could be read as a simile.
line could also be read as a the citation of a juxtaposition.
cannot awaken, Farquhar is dead and alive.
Since a dead man
cannot distinguish
Peyton Farquhar's reality is not an exclusive collection of
"is's" along a linear chronology.
He does not experience first this, then
another this, so that what came before the first is not now.
is not, only a juxtaposition.
There is no is and
Readers must identify Farquhar's experience as
the character's reality but then juxtapose that identification
readers' texts.
However, the
Or at least he is experiencing both
so close together that readers, and probably Farquhar,
between the two.
That
with the rest of
This juxtaposition results in an interpretation that allows for a
multitude of possibilities and thus a corresponding shift of interpretation
concerning
what is and what occurs.
This might be,
the variety of possibilities in continuing interpretation,
is the series of coexisting predicates
polar opposites
Aristotle could not reconcile.
which stand as independent
predicates
retaining
out, thus
generating
their
independence
and
further interpretation.
Instead of
and equal entities, the Hebrews
still
not
Boman
cancelling
explains
each
that this
other
see
67
phenomenon
results
from
the
allows everyone to become
Hebraic
concept
"contemporaneous
of contemporaneity,
which
with a well-remembered
occurrence of his past while he is reliving it once more in his memory
without forgetting at that moment the year or the epoch in which it took place
and the significance it eventually
(143).
acquired for the remainder of his life"
Just as Rabbinic thinking presents us with a process and not a product,
so does Farquharian thinking;
not seen as independent
general and particular,
categories.
In Rabbinic
inside and outside,
interpretation
create an element of the contiguous whole, another if
search for truth.
they
are
mesh to
to consider in the
Davidson argues that Farquhar's escape never occurs.
She
postulates that Bierce is more interested with one's perceptual processes at a
critical juncture.
Bierce's curiosity lies in how "inherited
superstitions, past
conditionings and subliminal impulses-as much as any external stimulidetermine
a character's
responses
to what they naively choose
external reality," implying that Bierce's characters
"real" reality.
to regard as
are out of touch with
"Fooled into death," she says, "that character can only try,
unsuccessfully, to fool himself out again" (13).
attempt to escape death was successful.
But the fact remains that the
This is one of the if s that Davidson
fails to consider-that because Farquhar never knew he died, he did not die.
This is the simplest and yet simultaneously most profound might be to
consider, the possibility that words actually create reality.
postulated that "the existential now
preoccupation,
retaining"
which
is
a
("Narrative Time"
is determined
'making-present,'
173).
Ricoeur has
by the present of
inseparable
from
awaiting
and
I suspect that only with a marriage of this
z-
68
vivifying power of the word and this if of traditional Rabbinic thought can
Bierce's reader resolve Farquhar's death, or escape.
The Hebrews perceive creation as an ongoing process. Thus,
progressive
interpretation
is a critical
idea in Rabbinic thought.
Torah
itself,
with each verse, letter, and so on, is understood to be the creation process, so
each seemingly insignificant element of Torah contains a multitude of
meanings
and
references.
Torah is creation
Torah thus includes
and ever-changing,
interpretation,
so is interpretation
and because
and meaning.
Clearly, text is understood to be more than just the written composition.
Like
Barthes, the Hebrews understand text to include the existence of everything in
and around it.
And since the process of word usage and the concept of things
and existence
bound;
the
are intimately
signifier-signified
interconnected,
relationship
word
and thing are inextricably
is inappropriate
since the word
the actual characterization of the "spirit" of the thing (Boman 60-61).
must understand
is
One
this nature of the world and time in Bierce's "An Occurrence
at Owl Creek Bridge."
Peyton Farquhar does not use his language to create a
metaphor for a moment of static physical reality; instead, he uses it as a
metonymy for a fluid physical reality.
The relation between his language and
his reality is not substitutive metaphor but contiguous metonymy.
Derrida
posits, "It remains, then, for us to speak, to make our voices resonate
throughout the corridors in order to make up for the break up of presence"
(Speech xxviii), or the absence of Being.
metonymically
constructs
The intertextuality
to interpenetrate
W-
his reality,
and
of the Rabbinic
the world of readers'
Thus, Peyton Farquhar's word usage
he escapes.
theory
experiences.
of interpretation
allows
Handelman points
texts
out that
69
for the Jews
in the text,
not just readers'
experiences
for interpretation principles
but even interpretation
were disclosed
is included
at Sinai with the text.
As such, the application of these principles yields not additions to the text, but
innate
characteristics
of the text.
is deduced by common human
Moreover,
Handelman
states
reasoning is given the same authority and status
as that which is derived from the divinely given hermeneutic
Readers
adhering to such principles
readers
that Farquhar escapes his death by creating
travel
until
Farquhar
is struck
They can also
an alternate
This interpretation is drawn directly
with Farquhar
(41).
as that which is derived from the
divinely given hermeneutic principles assigned to all text.
redefining ontology.
principles"
can assign to Peyton Farquhar's
reasoning the same divinity and authority
determine
that "whatever
reality, or
from the text since
"a stunning blow
upon
the back of the neck" (17) and "a blinding white light blazes all about him"
(17).
Because this interpretation
has been deduced by common human
reasoning, it must be viewed as another latent aspect of the text.
According
to Hebraic intertextuality,
each minuscule element of the
Hebraic text, even those which appear insignificant, is awarded a position of
privilege so that within the Rabbinic text, rigid temporal and spatial
distinctions collapse.
Thus, the division of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek
Bridge" into three sections, as if three texts, displays intertextuality, too.
The
structure of the story itself displays metonymy and a multitude of associations.
All begins with Peyton Farquhar's mental activity, his interpretation
of
reality, his use of words and the world he creates with them, just as all begins
with Torah-the
finality conceives
word's vivifying power.
Western
of each element of a narrative
thought's
assumption
independent of what
of
70
precedes
and follows at any given moment.
The idea that each portion of the
text is a discrete unit firmly established in its chronological position is absent
in Rabbinic interpretation and could be absent in an analysis of "An
Occurrence
units are
at Owl Creek Bridge."
so closely
interwoven
Contextual reading is fundamental,
and contemporaneous
considered divorced from any other.
that none
can
and all
ever be
Bierce's dividing the story serves not to
identify for readers the chronology of events, but only the sum of the activity
of Farquhar's
consciousness
in
its nonlinear
ontogeny.
The Torah's constant movement from one domain to another lacks clear
demarcation
and requires
readers to
approach Rabbinic
in order to reap from it its yield of might bes.
thought
from within
For example, consider that the
voice of the omniscient narrator makes statements like, "touched to gold by the
early sun, the brooding mists under the banks" and threads itself with
Farquhar's consciousness of a "new disturbance"
thrust of a knife" (11).
that "hurt his ears like the
While the narrator is present during the entire
discourse, it is critical to recognize that the identity of the narrator changes,
creating
a fluid
shift never
Farquhar's experience.
separated
from
readers'
experiences
nor from
The shifting back and forth is so fluid that it is not
until the conclusion of the story that we realize that while we were assuming
that the activity we were following has been relayed to us by the omniscient
narrator,
Farquhar
has
been
the
narrator.
These shifts in discourse often leave readers behind in a wake of
confusion.
For example,
These movements
in the fourth paragraph
of the first section, we read:
left the condemned
the sergeant
man and
standing
on the two ends of the same plank . . . This plank had been held in
71
place by the weight of the captain, it was now held by that of the
sergeant.
At a signal from the former the latter would step aside, the
plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between the two
ties.
The arrangment commended itself to his judgment as simple and
effective.
He
His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged.
looked a moment at his "unsteadfast footing," then let his gaze wander
to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet.
A
piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed
it down the stream.
stream!
(10-11;
How slowly it appeared to move!
emphasis
What a sluggish
Linkin's)
Linkin explains that in this passage we see a narrative transfer occur.
Previously
readers have perceived the narrator as merely
recording data" (Linkin 140).
paragraph
a "camera
Initially, "the linguistic structure of this
seems to conform to the military narrator's
idiolect"
readers to determine even a pattern of speech (Linkin 140).
readers obtain a new "location" with Bierce's
personal
pronouns and confusing
introduction
referents (Linkin
find themselves inside Farquhar's thought process.
140).
and
allows
Soon, however,
of ambiguous
Eventually
readers
As Linkin points out, "In
retrospect we easily pinpoint exactly where the shift in consciousness
occurs,
but as we read we seem to ease imperceptibly into the consciousness of the
condemned man" (140-141).
Readers are forced to wander between the
different worlds of the two narrators without being able to identify
consistently
who
is who
when.
Floyd Merrell argues in "Metaphor and Metonymy: A Key to Narrative
Structure"
that "the mind-and
by extrapolation literature,
a product
of the
72
mind-is
world"
an
active rather than a passive
(1).
agent in interrelationship
Merrell asserts that the next logical assumption is that artistic
creation does not entail the mind's merely copying reality.
"'invents'
with the
hitherto unknown
realities
and
thus
'transforms
Rather, the mind
the
world,'
sense that it constantly penetrates the physical world to reorganize
reinterpret it" (1).
voice upon
Employing free indirect discourse,
Farquhar's
experience
to ensure
in the
and
Bierce intrudes his
that readers
recognize
that
Farquhar's experience is one element of each reader's whole, but at the same
time constructs the entirety of Farquhar's whole.
Bierce did not punctuate
the entire narrative
that "Peyton Farquhar was dead" (18).
This would not be evident if
with
his own omniscient
remark
Otherwise readers could not imagine
that what they had just completed reading was only one element of a whole
and that in the reality of the soldiers on Owl Creek Bridge Peyton Farquhar's
body did hang.
To understand this principle
according
to Handelman
a meaning
of metonymy
"uncovered
further, consider that
through
interpretation
dispenses with the particular form in which it is clothed" (75).
critical to consider and determine Farquhar's experience
never
Thus, it is
in terms of how that
experience is related to, or clothed for, readers, in this case the clothing being
a mixture of an omniscient narrator's thoughts and Farquhar's
thoughts.
This
can lead us only to assume that as far as Farquhar is concerned, his experience
on Owl Creek Bridge is a valid one, metaphysical or otherwise, and that the
experience of the others on the bridge is just as valid.
of the experience
intertextual
11. 1"'ll- 1
11
and
, ,
,
-
"-
is just as relevant
includes
all
as another's
perspectives.
, I
Farquhar's perception
since the experience
Remember,
according to
Im
is
Rabbinic
73
thought, the text always exceeds
any interpretation
hence does not provide an adequate
completely fulfilled.
which can be given it, and
meaning that can be finalized or
So, too, are readers unable at the finished reading of "An
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" to provide an adequate meaning that can be
finalized or completely fulfilled.
another consideration,
truth.
They are left only with another might be,
a continuing interpretation
and are no closer to the
Even though the omniscient narrator commands authority at the end of
the story, readers have experienced an escape
was not Peyton Farquhar, who was it?
from death with someone.
If it
Having succumbed to that which is all
silence and darkness, Peyton Farquhar ceases to speak and so ceases to be,
believing until he no longer has the ability to believe that he has escaped
death.
Ironically, it is only in his dying that he succeeds in his escape.
What readers of Peyton Farquhar's story assume to be objective reality
turns out to be just as much the character's consciousness.
Halpin Frayser's
story, which readers assume to be a dream, turns out to be what is assumed
objective reality.
As usual, Bierce's manipulation of time startles readers and
prevents them from resolving the tale.
The tale is introduced with the
epigraph from Hali, "a bogus mystic" (Davidson 103):
For by death is wrought greater change than hath been shown.
Whereas in general the spirit that removed cometh back
upon
occasion, and is sometimes seen of those in flesh (appearing in the
form of the body it bore) yet it hath happened that the veritable body
without the spirit hath walked.
And it is attested of those encountering
who have lived to speak thereon that a lich so raised up hath no
natural affection,
nor remembrance thereof,
but only hate.
Also, it is
74
known that some spirits which in life were benign become by death
evil
altogether.-Hali
(395; italics Bierce's)
The foregoing epitaph and a fourth section provide a frame for an otherwise
identical structure to that found in "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."
In
the first section, we are introduced to Halpin Frayser who awakes from a
dreamless sleep in a forest to whisper a name,
which we fail to appreciate at this point.
"Catherine Larue," the irony of
Subsequently
we are provided an
explanation as to why he finds himself asleep in a forest.
and dreams this time.
until a terrifying
ends.
He falls asleep again
We travel with him through the forest in his dream
ghostly apparition of his mother appears,
and the section
In section two we are provided with the character's background
information, just as in section two of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."
section three
we return to the confrontation
In
with the ghostly apparition,
"the
thing so like, yet so unlike his mother" (401); again, the irony is not clear yet.
Presumably we still follow Frayser's dream, for we leave section three with the
statement "Halpin Frayser dreamed that he was dead" (402). In the fourth
section we accompany a sheriff and his man at arms as they search through
the woods for a madman recently spotted there.
We learn the story of
Catherine Larue and that the madman for whom the sheriff searches is her
husband who murdered her.
Ultimately they come upon a body, which we
know to be Halpin Frayser, lying upon Catherine Larue's grave.
sheriff remembers
that "the murdered
we understand the irony
mother's grave
woman's name
that Halpin Frayser died unknowingly
and the double irony that,
apparition murdered him.
had been
Halpin
When the
Frayser"
(408),
on his
in some form and fashion, that
Frayser's story,
which
readers
assume to be
75
a dream, turns out to be what is assumed objective reality, the inverse of their
reading experience of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."
of Halpin Frayser"
Occurrence
reverses the narrative circumstances
at Owl Creek Bridge" to startle readers
from resolving
Thus, "The Death
found in "An
again and to prevent them
the tale.
Once more the concept of linear time fails readers in their attempt to
determine a chronology of events.
The first section of the story introduces
Halpin Frayser and sets the scene for the activities to take place.
second section of Peyton Farquhar's story, Halpin Frayser's
Like the
second section
details his past and provides an explanation for the circumstance in which we
find him.
Readers begin their reading with, "In his youth Halpin Frayser had
lived with his parents in Nashville, Tennessee" (398).
the character's
consciousness
Having already entered
via his dream, readers assume that they
maintain that position as they move into his history in the second section.
It is
not at all unusual that the character should be spurred to think of his past at
the sight of his dead mother.
So, adhering to a concept of linear time, readers
are inclined to assume this statement is a displacement from the chronological
activity of events in the story.
They fail to recognize the intertextuality of the
story, that the tale encompasses the past and the future in the present.
Nevertheless,
the second section is another display of Bierce's stream-of-
consciousness
technique and can very
well be understood to be in the present
as much as any other element of the text.
establishes
His use of the past perfect tense
what appears to be an ackowledgement
of linear time.
But this
appearance disintegrates with the rest of the story as such tools as verb tense,
76
confusing
referents,
and
ambiguous
pronouns
continue
to
undermine
appearances.
After awakening in the woods to utter the name, Catherine Larue,
Frayser falls asleep again to dream, and "he thought he was walking along a
dusty road" (396).
But before the end of the paragraph, we read, "Soon he came
to a parting of ways" (396), not "soon he thought he came to a parting of ways."
By dropping such key phrases, Bierce makes it easy for readers to forget that
they follow a dream.
Indeed, it would appear that this is his objective, for at
the end of the first section, Frayser determines not to submit to the evil around
him, the blood and the "evil existences" which haunted his way, and begins to
write a poem.
When at the end of the story a detective and a deputy sheriff
find Frayser dead, the victim clutches a poem, and readers are again forced to
determine whether they were following a dream or not when they read,
"He
wrote with terrible rapidity . . . " (398).
For a possible interpretation of the foregoing events,
consider Ricoeur's
contention that "It is our preoccupation, not the things of our concern, that
determines the sense of time" ("Narrative Time" 173).
He explains that what
happens in time, while "not reducible to the representation of linear time," is
nevertheless
preoccupation
subjected to such interpretation because the time of our
was
first
measured
and seasons ("Narrative Time" 172).
by
the
natural
environment,
shifting
light
But he points out that the "day is not an
abstract measure; it is a magnitude which corresponds to our concern and to
the world ("Narrative Time" 173).
The day measures the time of labor, that "in
which it is time to do something" ("Narrative Time" 173).
It is important to see
the distinction in the meanings of the "now" which belongs to the time of
WAWA wo mWNNWMNWANWWM
-0-0-op-ow
77
preoccupation
and the "now"
which belongs to the abstract moment,
which is
a part of a series which defines the line of ordinary time.
The existential now is determined by the present of preoccupation,
which is a "making-present,"
retaining.
It is because,
inseparable
from
in preoccupation,
awaiting
concern
itself into this making-present and to obliterate
and
tends to contract
its dependency
with
regard to awaiting and retaining that the now isolated in this way
can
fall prey to the representation of the now as an isolated abstract
instant.
("Narrative Time"
173)
Thus, we see that time does not define experiences;
experiences.
rather, time is defined by
Such a phenomenon in "An Occurrence
at Owl Creek Bridge"
allows the would-be hero an escape from death.
In "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" when Bierce writes, "As these
thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the
doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the
sergeant" (11), he informs readers they are to follow Farquhar's stream of
consciousness by following those words set down.
But in "The Death of Halpin
Frayser" the stream of consciousness is not introduced so blatantly.
Readers
have difficulty recognizing the phenomenon because of its subtlety.
But by
the time they read, "Soon he came to a parting of ways . . . " (396) during the
recitation of the dream,
readers recognize
they are within Frayser's
consciousness, for the physical character did not really come to a parting of
ways.
A third person narrator would have stated, "Soon he
a parting of ways
.
. . ."
an indivisible whole;
thought he came to
It is only at the end of the tale that we see the text as
we see that Frayser's
consciousness
and experiences
are
78
synonymous.
We are reminded that the text is not a material thing located in a
single space and circumscribed by a quantifiable time.
Just as readers of Peyton Farquhar's story who want to discover all the
text can offer might follow Riceour's suggestion and take for granted the
structure of time instead of reflecting on it, so might readers of Halpin
Frayser's story.
This taking time for granted allows readers to concentrate on
more important questions:
What did Halpin Frayser experience?
Did he
experience a dream?
Did he experience something beyond his dream?
he experience both?
While these questions are necessarily impossible to
answer,
several
narrative techniques
in this story
can be analyzed
Rabbinic viewpoint to gain a multitude of considerations
can
Or did
from
the
about what the text
offer.
Identifying
the
nature
of narrative
techniques
in Halpin Frayser's
story is difficult until we recall Barthes' idea that "the theory of the text can
coincide only with the activity of writing" (81).
as writers too; readers actively participate
written composition,
literature.
Barthes conceived of readers
in creating the meaning of any
an idea akin to Fish's, that readers themselves "make"
The importance of a marriage of reading and writing a text was
apparent in our analysis of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and also
becomes apparent in an analysis of "The Death of Halpin Frayser."
Halpin Frayser,
awareness.
"creatures
experiences
heightened
sensory
The trees are noxious, and "audible and startling whispers" of
so obviously not of earth" fill his ears (397).
Frayser's experience
use
like Peyton Farquhar,
Readers
must accept
as valid and incorporate it into their own text.
a character's words
even while creating their own text
Readers
different from the
79
character's text, for the character's is a constituent of their own text.
the context of Frayser's dream.
Consider
As with "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,"
readers fail to recognize until the end of "The Death of Halpin Frayser" that
the assumed context is inappropriate,
or at least questionable.
a text even at a different level in Halpin Frayser's tale.
provided
with Frayser's
But there exists
Not only are readers
words via stream-of-consciousness;
not only do
readers use those words to create their own text; they are suddenly provided
with a written text within a written text, a poem Frayser writes.
And to
complicate
initially
the matter the second written text, as far as readers
understand it, is not really written, but is merely part of a dream.
But in the
fourth section, the sheriff reads a poem "that sounds like Bayne" (408), and
readers
cannot help wondering
how the poem was composed.
It might be argued that the poem was written by Bayne and that
Farquhar carried it with him, or knew it by heart, and reenacted its
composition, attributing the original act to himself, within the context of his
dream.
However, Bayne clearly did not write the poem.
collected works, and "that poem is not among them" (408).
Jaralson owns Bayne's
Had the poem been
written by Bayne and inadvertently left out of the published collection, it
would at least have been completed.
prepare us.
Bierce even provides foreshadowing to
Although Halpin Frayser had never before written poetry and
"could not have written correctly a line of verse to save himself
no knowing when the dormant faculty might wake . . . " (399).
question most likely seems to be, "Under what circumstances
Frayser write that poem?"
not "Who wrote the poem?"
.
. . , there was
Thus, the
did Halpin
80
In attempting to answer such a question, we find the importance of the
Hebraic idea of progressive interpretation,
continuing
body.
be.
what ifs.
a consideration
of all those
The poem was composed in a dream but found on a dead
Frayser dreamed he was a poet, but readers are told he was not but might
What if both statements are true?
The poem is metonymic.
The problem is
that the whole to which the poem must be related is not obvious, for it appears
both in Frayser's dream as well as in what appears to be the objective reality
which follows it when Holker and Jaralson find the composition on the dead
man's body.
produces
Both.
Readers cannot reconcile all these elements of the text.
the poem?
Stream-of-consciousness,
or actual
manual
What
activity?
The poem is metonymic, and readers must struggle to discover the whole
with which the poem is associated.
This principle of metonymy
concerning the mysterious
aligned with the principle of juxtaposition.
poem is closely
Recalling that the principle of
juxtaposition may be interpreted as a display of something which is and
simultaneously is not, we are reminded of Halpin Frayser's poem, or, more
precisely, of Halpin Frayser as poet.
While readers believe they follow
Frayser's dream, Frayser announces, "I shall relate my wrongs, . . . -I,
helpless mortal, a penitent, an unoffending poet" (397).
a
Then the omniscient
narrator intrudes and tells us, "Halpin Frayser was a poet only as he was a
penitent: in his dream" (397).
narrator's
statement
But according
all elements
to Rabbinic
Frayser's
tlllll
readers remove the omniscient
text and deem
modes of interpretation,
of the text (time,
self-contained
101,14,10%
from
Automatically,
experience,
it objective
information.
this is unacceptable
sensation, being) cohere
since
and are
within the text which is all that exists, and thus the text defines
-
-
- -
0
wwammomm
81
the world.
Thus, Halpin Frayser is a poet, even while he is not.
paradoxical element of juxtaposition pervades the short story.
This
As early
as the
fourth sentence, we read: "He lived in St. Helena, but where he lives now is
uncertain, for he is dead" (395).
Just like Peyton Farquhar, then, Halpin
Frayser is dead and alive; his being exists precisely on the boundary of the
same and the different.
Even the evil apparition displays juxtaposition, for it
is a "thing so like, yet so unlike his mother" (401); it is a zombie, a dead body
without a living soul.
(402), he was dead.
Indeed, while "Halpin Frayser dreamed that he was dead"
How can one dead dream of death?
only a juxtaposition.
There is no is and is not,
Just as with "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" readers
need to identify Frayser's experience as the character's
juxtapose that identification with the rest of readers'
world.
reality but then to
texts
to create another
The elements juxtaposed in the tale of Halpin Frayser lie so close
together that resolution is impossible.
All things are valid, and no thing can
be cancelled for the sake of another.
We are required to consider all possible
yields of the text, not as additions to but as innate characteristics of the text.
And, just as with interpretations obtained through the use of ordained
hermeneutic principles,
all these possibilities are significant
as well.
Thus we
assign to Halpin Frayser's reasoning the same preeminence that we assign to
our own.
The structure of the story displays the Hebraic notion of intertextuality,
too.
The failure of the four sections to appear in chronological order supports
the concept
that
traditional,
logical
into "The Death of Halpin Frayser."
Western
thinking
cannot
provide
insight
Each portion of the text is not a discrete
unit firmly established in its chronological
position; all units are so closely
82
interwoven
separation
and simultaneously
present that none can be considered
from any other at any given moment.
in
We cannot simply say Halpin
Frayser lies down; he sleeps; he awakens and speaks; he dreams; he dies.
may appear to be the case, at least as long as we follow Halpin Frayser.
when we follow Holker and Jaralson to the discovery
suddenly this string of events is questionable.
This
But
of the dead Frayser,
What appears to be movement
from present to past and back again is also the activity of Frayser's mind and
all in the present.
So what can we say?
Inexplicability is the very success of
the story, for that inexplicability yields numerous
considerations.
Nowhere
does the text outside Frayser indicate that he does not actually walk while he
dreams he walks.
We only assume he has fallen asleep on his mother's grave
and remains there for the entire dream.
But his experiences
on the "haunted
way" he walks (396) blend with his dream and thereby diffuse the distinction
between
the two.
Readers must recognize this Hebraic intertextuality in the story in
order to understand that it is the essence of this story to be irresolvable.
Otherwise, the fact that it cannot be explained logically will lead readers to
determine that "the text . . . cannot sustain itself under the weight of its
overload.
The result is a sham of the whole process of interpretation"
(Davidson 113).
The fault for the sham lies in the interpretation, not in the
story.
The illogical nature of "The Death of Halpin Frayser" that can only be
embraced intertextually is also a part of "The Man and the Snake" and is most
evident in, again, Bierce's narrative techniques.
concern in this story.
Time is not so great a
While the second section of the story interrupts the
83
linear progression of events, it does not, as in the previous stories, return to
events of the past.
presence
in
Rather it merely studies Harker Brayton and explains his
Dr. Druring's
house
and
the events take place in that house.
describes
the
environment
Here the concept
within
which
of intertextuality is
displayed not in a fusion of time but merely a fusion of readers' and Brayton's
texts.
But readers must not get caught up in the relative chronology of the
story, for intertextuality remains the key to understanding the tale.
Again, "It
is our preoccupation, not the things of our concern, that determines the sense
of time" ("Narrative Time" 173).
As in Bierce's
stream-of-consciousness
other two stories,
technique.
this intertextuality
In chapter two it was
introduced with the
noted that the key
to the success of "The Man and the Snake" lies in Bierce's use of stream-ofconsciousness,
for it allows
readers
they retain until they encounter
story.
to acquire
Dr. Druring's
Brayton's
perceptions
Even though the written text informs readers that
perceptions,
which
at the end of the
only Brayton's
attention "disclosed . . . the coils of a large serpent" (143), readers do not
question Brayton's attention and attribute to it more authority than it
warrants.
When the story ends, and Dr. Druring discovers a stuffed snake
under the bed, it becomes evident that the text Harker Brayton compiles in the
story is contrary to the text Dr. Druring compiles when he states that Brayton
"died in a fit" (148).
incorporate
Dr.
The texts that readers compile thus change accordingly to
Druring's
text.
This change reflects the principle of metonymy in "The Man and the
Snake."
formulate
Each text compiled is an association of the whole and is required to
any hypothesis
oamom,
concerning
what
actually
happened
in the
story,
84
for many things happen
simultaneously.
A
snake with
suns"
"two dazzling
(146) for eyes coils beneath a bed, and "its breath mingled with the
atmosphere" (145) which Brayton himself breathes.
But, too, Dr. Druring finds
that Brayton "died in a fit" and discovers, not a live snake coiled beneath the
bed, but a stuffed snake; "its eyes were two shoe buttons" (148).
Neither of
these two texts distorts an absolute reality, for no absolute reality exists
represented.
to be
Both texts merely provide two interpretations, two
preoccupations
of a fluid ontology, both valid, both understandable
simultaneous.
It is likely that
readers' interpretations provide
and
a third.
Thus,
the whole is the entire text which can be compiled, including all the what
abouts applicable (what about the fact that Brayton saw a malignant snake
under the bed and Dr. Druring saw a stuffed one?), and each sub-text is an
association and performs metonymically.
There is not one which can be
substituted for the other, for readers can verify the validity of both Brayton's
and Druring's texts, having experienced
both.
Aristotle's metaphorical
structure of logic, with its "If this, then this" predicative hierarchy, is not the
only way to explain "The Man and the Snake."
We see in the story other elements of Hebraic intertextuality as well.
In
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" juxtaposition was evident in the
simultaneous life and death of Peyton Farquhar, who "was as one already dead"
but who nevertheless awakens (13).
In "The Man and the Snake" this same
type of juxtaposition, simultaneous states of life and death, can be found in the
treatment of the snake.
"The snake's malignant head" (146) is stuffed;
eyes were two shoe buttons" (148).
malignant and stuffed and inanimate.
"its two
Thus, the snake is both animate and
Again, we see the importance of an
85
interpretation
possibilities
that allows
and
concerning
a subsequent
what is.
character's
for consideration
corresponding
shift
of interpretation
Davidson's claim that "external stimuli . . . determine a
responses to what they naively choose to regard as external
reality" (13) is again arguable.
themselves
(145).
of a multitude of what abouts or
with
Bierce tells us, "These thoughts shaped
greater or less definition in Brayton's
mind and begot action"
The word's vivifying power precludes any choice Brayton may have
about what Davidson terms external reality.
Brayton's "existential now is
determined by the present of preoccupation,
which
("Narrative Time" 176).
Davidson's.
is a 'making-present"'
Words define Brayton's reality as much as they define
But Brayton did not have the opportunity to include Dr. Druring's
words in his own text.
Davidson did.
This fusion of texts in "The Man and the Snake" is echoed in the
narrative
technique
and shows once
the text but is a textual
constituent
again that interpretation
is not outside
which intrudes upon readers'
This fluidity which allows the all-embracing
experience.
Hebraic Torah to shift from
sphere to sphere and issue to issue without clear demarcation is reflected in
the narrative
structure
of Bierce's
short
story.
An
omniscient
narrator
relates
the entirety of sections two and four, but sections one and three subtly employ
free indirect discourse.
Section one opens with, "Stretched at ease upon a sofa,
in gown and slippers, Harker Brayton smiled as he read . . . " (142).
The
character continues to read until "A train of reflection followed-for Brayton
was a man of thought-"
(143).
Then he sees the two points of light, which
"shone with, it seemed to him, an added fire" (143).
Finally, Brayton saw
"almost directly under the footrail of the bed, the coils of a large serpent-the
86
points of light were its eyes!" (143).
transition in narrative
perspective.
The preceding excerpts relay a subtle
The first two statements
clearly present
an omniscient narrator since he refers to the character in third person.
The
last excerpt, however, just as clearly has Brayton exclaiming, "the points of
light were its eyes!" (143); by the end of the story we realize this to be
Brayton's editorial, for a stuffed snake has no light in its eyes.
The actual
transition occurs with the third statement, and the key phrase is one Bierce
uses over and over again, "it seemed to him" (143).
Bierce is not interested in
writing fiction to represent reality; he is interested in making "what is related
seem probable in the reading-seem true" (Wiggins 31).
ambiguity
Because of the
of the phrase "it seemed to him," readers are unable to determine to
which narrator the statement belongs.
to an omniscient
Initially it is reasonable to attribute it
narrator because of the third person
pronouns
"him"
and
"he" in the sentence: "He thought, too, that they might have moved a trifle-"
(143).
The passage continues until we read the last statement, and here we
realize that the identity of the narrator has become questionable.
Just as in
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "The Death of Halpin Frayser" these
shifts in discourse leave readers confused, and readers are forced to wander
between
the different
worlds of the two narrators
identify consistently who is who when.
without being able to
This ambiguity is in essence the
tychism Peirce articulated and is essential to the nature of this story seen
Hebraically
or otherwise.
Grenander
produce
points out that in order to be successful terror stories must
fear, either
by relating danger or by relating
something
thought
to
87
be dangerous.
She identifies Bierce's
best tales of ironical terror as belonging
to two groups:
those in which the actual situation is harmful,
with the protagonist
conceiving it to be harmless and reacting accordingly;
which
the
actual
situation
is harmless,
and those in
with the protagonist
conceiving it to be harmful and reacting accordingly
. . . .
What the
reader's grasp of events will be is controlled by the narration.
Grenander's last statement is especially
(94)
critical, for it reveals her struggle
with that nature of language which Peirce termed tychism, the uncertainty or
indeterminacy
of language.
To resolve her struggle,
Grenander decides that
someone, in this case Harker Brayton, is guilty of misconception,
perceptions of reality must align with each other.
that
according
to
Hebraic
there is no identifiable
contrary to readers.
intertextuality
absolute
reality;
no
for all
But it must be remembered
character
a character
misconceives
may merely
since
conceive
The conceptions are merely different. What for Harker
Brayton is true can very well be not true for readers.
This irresolvability
points out the pleasure of interpreting the story within the context of Hebraic
intertextuality.
"A Psychological
Shipwreck" tells the story of William Jarrett, who has
embarked on a voyage to America from England, and his out-of-body
experience
during the voyage.
Metaphysically
transferred from one ship to
another without his knowledge, Jarrett encounters
on the second ship, The
Morrow, the fiancee of his travelling companion on the first ship, City of
Prague.
On the first ship Jarrett initiates a discussion with Miss Harford
concerning a book she is reading, "Denneker's Meditations,"
until the ship
88
encounters
bizarre
atmospheric
conditions
and
eventually
Jarrett
sinks.
awakens aboard the City of Prague to discover that his body, at least, has
remained there through the duration of the ship's passage.
Doyle, his travelling companion, has also been reading
He discovers
"Denneker's
Meditations" and only then learns that Doyle and Miss Harford have been
engaged to be married.
He never relates to Doyle his metaphysical
experience,
not even after The Morrow disappears at sea and Miss Harford is never heard
from
again.
Quite unlike the foregoing tales, "A Psychological Shipwreck"
is not
made up of irreconcilable texts, although there is more than one text within
the story.
As usual, at the end of the story readers are required to incorporate
more than one text into the whole.
there
Until halfway through the story, it appears
William Jarrett, the first person narrator, informs
exists only one text.
us:
In the summer of 1874 1 was in Liverpool, whither I had gone on
business . . . .
Having finished my business, and feeling the
lassitude and exhaustion incident to its dispatch, I felt that a
protracted sea voyage would be both agreeable and beneficial,
so
instead of embarking for my return on one of the many fine
passenger steamers I booked for New York on the sailing vessel
Morrow ....
(494)
Readers have no reason to question
they
later read the following passage
this first person
from
narration,
"Denneker's
even when
Meditations":
To sundry it is given to be drawn away, and to be apart from the
body for a season; for, as concerning rills which would flow
89
each other the weaker is borne
across
along by the stronger,
so
there be certain of kin whose paths intersecting, their souls do
bear company, the while their bodies go fore-appointed
ways,
(495)
unknowing.
assume they have yet to encounter Jarrett's being drawn away
Readers
apart from his body for a season.
and
However, when, after Jarrett awakens to find
he has been on the City of Prague since its departure from Liverpool three
weeks previous, they understand that the tale began in the midst of the out-ofbody experience.
beginning
What prevented them from recognizing this fact
was that Jarrett
in the
himself had been unable to recognize the fact and
had even provided an explanation for his passage on the Morrow.
Thus, we
have the written text entitled "A Psychological Shipwreck" before readers, the
written text entitled "Denneker's
Meditations" before the readers,
Doyle, and Miss Harford, and, initially, at least, Jarrett's text.
Jarrett,
Eventually,
however, they all fuse to become one, and explicable at that, as we shall see.
Here again we see at work the principle Grenander outlined, that
This
readers' perceptions of what they read are controlled by the narration.
control is no less remarkable since the story does not call for reconciliation of
irreconcilable texts.
Indeed, the explanation of the events of two texts,
readers' and Jarrett's, is provided quite candidly by the third text, the excerpt
from "Denneker's Meditations."
a reader nor Jarrett
Nothing remains to be reconciled, for neither
is privy to information the other does not have;
text has become readers' text in this case.
noteworthy
Instead, what makes this tale
is that it reverses the techniques
to achieve, nevertheless,
the same effect.
Jarrett's
Bierce uses in his previous tales
A strange
inexplicable
event has
90
Graciously, Bierce
occurred; how is it to be integrated into the readers' texts?
has provided us with an answer to that question in the form of "Denneker's
Meditations."
:Davidson declares that Bierce's "stories
of language and inconsistencies
Shipwreck" is not one of them.
delineate multiple levels
between them" (14), but "A Psychological
What is interesting here is that the same effect
shifting narrative
point of view typical of free indirect discourse concealed
Here, the
the multiplicity of texts within the story until the tale's end.
is reversed,
technique
the
Previously,
is achieved through a new method, first person narration.
for the narrative
in "Denneker's
Meditations"
clarifies
the narratives in the other texts composing "A Psychological Shipwreck."
Particularly interesting is the role of time in "A Psychological
Shipwreck."
Unlike the previous stories, this tale has no divisions into
Thus, we have no switching from past to present in terms of a linear
sections.
chronology.
Bierce manipulates readers' conceptions
of time to promote the
coincidence which makes the story remarkable. What we have is a type of the
Hebraic
concept of contemporaneity
that Boman
articulates.
he explains, allows everyone to become "contemporaneous
Contemporaneity,
with a well-
remembered occurrence of his past while he is reliving it once more in his
memory without forgetting at that moment the year or the epoch in which it
took place and the significance it eventually
life" (143).
acquired for the remainder of his
During the last half of the tale when Jarrett reorients himself
aboard the City of Prague, he is, in a sense, reliving a well-remembered event
of his past, living it once more in his memory without forgetting it occurred.
Herein lies the mystery.
linear chronology,
they
If readers continue to adhere to the concept of a
will struggle
to determine
when,
along the schemata,
91
did occur.
the events recorded
Doyle assures Jarrett that Jarrett has been
And yet
"right as a trivet all the time, and punctual at [his] meals" (496).
Jarrett and Janette Harford have become
(495).
well acquainted aboard the Morrow
On the other hand, an analysis of this event from the Hebraic point of
view explains
in terms of simultaneous
the event
experiences, one of which
does not necessarily cancel out or substitute for the other.
reveals juxtaposition
functioning
integrally
in
This same point also
"A Psychological
Shipwreck."
While Jarret is aboard the City of Prague, he is also aboard the Morrow,
Again, we are
existing within the same and the different simultaneously.
reminded
of Riceour's
postulate that the now
is a "making-present"
and that preoccupation
is constructed
("Narrative
by preoccupation,
Time"
173).
"A Psychological Shipwreck" is a beautiful example of the Hebraic
concept
interpretation
of progressive
inherent
within
intertextuality.
Just
as
the Hebrews believe the text is more than the written composition, so too does
William Jarrett.
Not only faced with the printed and bound copy of
"Denneker's Meditations,"
experienced the text.
interpretation
that
he is also faced with the contemporaneity
of having
We are reminded of the principle within Hebraic textual
grasped
reality
experiences with Bierce's previous
replaces
representation.
Like
our
stories we actually experience with the
character events which make up the tale we read.
Physical reality remains
fluid, and again we see that the relation between the character's language and
his physical reality is not mimetic but metonymic.
"The Difficulty of Crossing a Field" works differently from "A
Psychological Shipwreck."
In both stories a strange, inexplicable
event has
occurred and readers wonder how it is to be integrated into their text.
Only
92
two short pages, "The Difficulty of Crossing the Field" again utilizes Bierce's
technique of variegated narrative, but the various texts do not reconcile.
objective
narrator
begins the
tale
An
with:
One morning in July, 1854, a planter named Williamson, living six
miles from Selma, Alabama, was sitting with his wife and a child on
the veranda of his dwelling.
lawn, perhaps
Immeditately in front of the house was a
fifty yards in extent between
road, or, as it was called, the "pike."
the house and public
Beyond this road lay a close-
cropped pasture of some ten acres, level and without a tree, rock, or
any natural or artificial object on its surface.
not even a domestic animal in the field.
At the time there was
In another field, beyond the
pasture, a dozen slaves were at work under an overseer.
The most remarkable
objective nature.
characteristic
of this passage
(162)
is its undeniably
It reads like a legal account without any omniscient or
editorializing statements.
We follow Williamson as he tosses away his cigar,
rises to stride across the pike and greet the Wrens, his passing neighbors, and
enters the pasture in front of his house, where he simply disappears.
In the
passing carriage, the neighbor's son asks, "'Why, father, what has become of
Mr. Williamson?"'
(163).
The narrator intrudes:
"It is not the purpose of this
narrative to answer that question" (163) and then proceeds to introduce Mr.
Wren's account of the event.
Here the narrative point of view shifts, not
subtly as in the previous stories but quite obviously; the entire account is
quoted.
Mr. Wren tells us, "My son's exclamation caused me to look toward the
spot where I had seen the deceased [sic] an instant before, but he was not
there, nor was he anywhere visible" (163) ([sic] in Bierce's text).
After Mr.
93
Wren's testimony
the limited narrator returns to inform us,
might have been expected,
was
corroborated
"This testimony,
as
in almost every particular by the
only other eyewitness (if that is a proper term)-the lad James. . . . The boy
James Wren had declared at first that he saw the disappearance, but there is
nothing of this in his testimony given in court" (163-164).
logical or otherwise, for Williamson's
explanation,
limited narrator tells us later,
certainly
effectively comments
disappearance,
and the
"what has been here related is all that is
known of the matter"
for Williamson's disappearance,
There is never an
(164). By refusing
to provide an explanation
by stressing only what is known, Bierce
on the limitations of human existence and lets readers
know that any context may be merely constructed; it may not be absolute.
No
text seeks reconciliation with another in "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field"
because
no character
is privy to information
another does not have.
Because the story is so short, there is no time differentiation between
narratives.
We proceed with Williamson through a series of actions-and then
he did this, and then he did this-until he disappears.
testimonies
concerning the disappearance,
disappearance.
which, of course, should follow the
Time is an issue because we perceive of existence in time as
akin to existence within space.
he disappeared;
Then we follow the
Thus, we wonder where Williamson went when
we are concerned with what space he subsequently occupies.
However, the Hebraic concept of time, which does not consider time relative to
space, helps explain the disappearance
that for the Hebrews
more appropriately.
Boman explains
"the abstract never separates from the concrete"
(70-71).
So, in a sense, Williamson has quite possibly merely transferred from one
essence of the collective consciousness to another.
The Hebraic predilection
94
toward
here
perceiving
events
by Williamson's
that past, present,
in
terms
disappearance,
and
future
are
of stream-of-consciousness
bound
represented
the idea
reflects
for his disappearance
simultaneously
is
together
in rhythmic
What the written text reveals initially
alternation and in an indivisible whole.
is Williamson's present; what it reveals subsequently is his past or future,
Just like the written text, as far as the
when he exists in that other essence.
Hebrews might be concerned, Williamson's text is not a material thing located
in a single space
and circumscribed
by a quantifiable time.
Keeping such ideas in context is critical, and in "The Suitable
Bierce puts forth his treatise
Surroundings,"
a text.
that context
defines the nature
of
The main character, a writer, insists his reader read his ghost story at
night in a house abandoned in a dark forest only by the light of a tallow,
because readers must put themselves "into the frame of mind appropriate to
the sentiment of the piece" they read (164).
As writer of "The Difficulty of
Crossing a Field," Bierce makes the same point that suitable surroundings play
This supernatural
an important role in defining his written material.
experience cannot be explained naturally;
it requires readers to put
themselves in the appropriate frame of mind, in this case, Hebraic
intertextuality.
The narrative techniques Bierce uses in "The Difficulty of Crossing a
Field" indicate the advantage of interpreting the story within the concept of
Readers are first struck by the formal legalese of the
Hebraic intertextuality.
third person narrator and
environment
are provided
in which Williamson's
with a detailed
examination of the
occurs,
disappearance
even
to
the
that they know the distance between the house and the pike, fifty yards.
mn
-
--
R.
'401
extent
But
WOMAVAMMOWAVOMPOW
95
the
of the events is distinct from
inexplicable nature
disturbing
Herein lies the juxtaposition
and well-marked environment.
that familiar
of Hebraic
intertextuality, that display of something which is and simultaneously is not.
Bierce spreads before readers of "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field" a commonand objectivity,
scene using techniques of realism, accurate description,
place
to create a mere panorama.
But this realism serves only to highlight the
supernatural and twist, reverse, and topple the "certainties" of the world.
Suddenly, in the midst of this mundane scene a bizarre event occurs and
the
between
requires
reconciliation
occurs.
But this is not possible.
comfortable;
a
Indeed, it does.
supernatural
event
and
the
which
it
The surroundings are too familiar and too
event
should
occur
within
a supernatural
The world is never mundane and commonplace.
uncertain, and always a mystery, the world is as supernatural
disappearance.
in
environment
context.
Inexplicable,
as Williamson's
Bierce has been up to his old tricks and relied upon readers'
assumptions about the world and their place in it to make the world seem real
and
familiar.
No one in the story can provide an accurate assessment of what
happened to Mr. Williamson.
Neither can anyone outside the story, because all
rely upon the same predicative
questions concerning their world.
hierarchy to formulate logic and answer
And they base this logic on what they see.
Bierce understands this method of relating to the world and subverts it.
He
questions the validity of the term "eyewitness" (163), points out that James
Wren's testimony does not support his claim that he saw the disappearance
(164), and indicates
the event had occurred
"before
[Mrs. Williamson's]
and rendered her mad and incompetent to testify (163).
eyes"
The disappearance
96
even occurred while "Williamson was seen by all three [the Wrens and their
black boy Sam], walking leisurely across the pasture" (163).
The field hands
did not testify because "None . . . had seen him at all" (164), although those who
did testify had not actually seen him either, so their testimonies proved
inconclusive.
Bierce even goes so far as to have Wren say that he looked
"'where I had seen the deceased . . . before, but he was not . . . anywhere
visible"' (163).
The key word here is visible.
Bierce does not write, "but he was
He does not presume that Williamson no longer exists.
not . . . anywhere."
Bierce recognizes only that Williamson no longer exists as he has been known
But, "The courts decided that Williamson was dead, and his
to exist previously.
estate was distributed according to law" (164).
Logically speaking, the story is absurd.
But this is Bierce, and knowing
so helps us to consider and analyze the story appropriately,
traditional idea that what we see is what we get.
concerning Williamson's
disappearance
outside the
Just as testimonies
support the theory that we do not
Even with a
always get what we see, so does "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field."
written text before them, readers do not read a story complete with
introduction,
the
conflict,
story is evaluated
absurdity recedes.
climax,
resolution,
and denouement.
within the context of intertextuality,
However,
when
the story's
Since, according to Rabbinic thought, the text always
exceeds any interpretation assigned to it, it does not provide an adequate
meaning that can be finalized or completely fulfilled.
Instead it becomes a
vivid text with an incredible number of possible interpretations,
bes, for the only boundaries of reality
are our perceptions.
what
might
Thus, in "The
Difficulty of Crossing a Field" there are no opposing poles to move between,
97
a progressive
are required to move into the text to formulate
and readers
interpretation.
this chapter,
But the story is unlike the first three stories interpreted in
which
actually
present
readers
of
with various interpretations
the world within their written texts, or even the fourth story, which actually
interpretation
explains the
context.
of the world necessary to place the story
within
Instead, "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field" distorts what readers
might call absolute reality and undermines
their traditional concept of how
they see the world without providing an interpretation
planter Williamson did live as you and I.
However, he did not die.
of that distortion.
The
But he no longer lives as you and I.
Again we see the coexisting predicates Aristotle could
not reconcile and that substitutive metaphor does not work in the story.
Nor
do we see in "The Difficulty of Crossing the Field" the metonymy which we saw
at work in the other stories.
Bierce merely ends the story at its call for the
metonymic
principle that would
indubitably
requires readers
suggest simultaneous ontologies.
This
to formulate their own interpretations
of what
happened in the story and highlights the principle that that act of
interpretation is a part of the continuous revelation of the text, a total and
complete
experience
characterize
exposing connective
Readers themselves
must
the inner specific reality of the thing they read, and they can do
so if they operate intertextually
references,
relations.
and perceive a multitude of meanings and
relevant to all time and place within every statement,
letter of the text.
realities and
Merrell
thus 'transforms
penetrates the physical
remarks that "the mind
the world,'
world to
'invents'
word or
hitherto
unknown
in the sense that it constantly
reorganize and reinterpret
it"
(1).
In
Difficulty of Crossing a Field" we see again grasped reality instead of
"The
98
representation;
readers'
minds
must
recognize
to transform the world and reinterpret
previously
realities
unknown
it.
The tales of Peyton Farquhar's death, Halpin Frayser's, and Harker
Brayton's,
and the tales of the disappearances of Janette Harford and the
planter Williamson are more than the result of an intricate weaving of a tale
by a master story-teller.
They exemplify primary characteristics
of Hebraic
thought in direct opposition to those of Western literary critical theory.
non-linear perception of time, the use of metonymy,
The
and the varied
interpretations of a text due to the creative power of the word combine to
create mystical tales readers cannot resolve.
interpretation,
while
it provides
Even the Rabbinic method of
for the consideration
of alternate
insights
into the story, leaves readers resigned to the power of the word, admitting that,
as it provides the construct for our reality, the text remains superior.
CHAPTER V
BACKTRACKING AND PRESSING ONWARD: THE ESSENCE OF POSTMODERNISM
AND HEBRAIC INTERTEXTUALITY
Bierce wrote during the age of literary realism, but he refused to
comply with the dictates of mainstream literary critics and allow his stories to
reflect the ordinary "smiling aspects" of America as William Dean Howells
suggested realistic literature should (Wiggins 44).
He was not impressed with
what Gambaccini quotes him as calling the "'measureless,
meaningless,
and
unimaginative novels, destitute of plot, destitute of purpose, destitute of art"' of
the traditionally esteemed Howells and Henry James (41).
"For Bierce the universe was not made
interested in realistic literature.
sensible
by
(Davidson
the certainties
of much
late-nineteenth-century
science"
Instead of probabilities, he was interested in possibilities
122).
(Wiggins 44).
Bierce was not
So he played with language to become what Gambaccini calls
"an American master" (41).
Gambaccini
explains:
[Bierce was] a more colorful prose stylist than Crane and better at
characterization
than Poe.
In his ability to make the reader share the
terror felt by his protagonists, Bierce reminds us of Dostoyevski.
His
stories juxtapose unlikely elements in a manner not seen before or
after him . . . .
The joy of reading Bierce is in searching a little harder
for truths and in following a story that doesn't have an obvious
destination.
dreamer.
In Bierce's nightmares we dream in tandem with the
(41-42)
99
100
Ambrose
with tenuous
Bierce's preoccupation
at the
possibilities
expense of stable certainties resulted in his producing material which
requires
readers
critical
Gambaccini
explains
to
develop
that "[Bierce's]
methods
alternative
tales,
unlike Poe's,
of
interpretation.
don't always progress
from A to B; they may be less accessible" and cites the foregoing as the reason
for Bierce's failure to be ranked among the premier American
nineteenth century (42).
writers
of the
and
Bierce's readers cannot cling to assumptions
preconceived ideas concerning the nature of the world and expect to resolve
Gambaccini says, "[Bierce's] stories can be
the conflicts presented in his tales.
Time is out of sync, the reader's expectations for the plot aren't
disconcerting.
It is difficult to distinguish
fulfilled, and almost nothing is foreshadowed.
dreams from reality; it's even tough to tell who's dead and who isn't" (41).
Bierce's
nebulous
short stories
compare
with the postmodern
Bernard Malamud and the Latin American writers Julio
writings of
Cortazar and Jorge Luis
Borges, who owe much of their creative technique to Bierce (Davidson 128).
Gambaccini says that Bierce's influence on the Latin writers cannot be
"overestimated"
Bierce and such postmodern writers explore the nature
(42).
of reality and take advantage of the similar, the different, and the juxtaposed.
As Davidson points out, such postmodern writers reshape the constructs of
language
and literature
so that "the logician's
either/or becomes
(121).
both/and, an open-ended refusal to dichotomize"
postmodern
writers
undermine
the
foundation
upon
the writer's
In doing so,
which
self-identity
rests.
Short stories like Cortazar's "Axolotls" and Borges' "The Secret Miracle" as well
as novels like Malamud's The Tenants "confuse and confound such
fundamental
Western
dichotomies
as reason
and
superstition,
reality
and art,
101
even
reader
and
writer.
Mimesis,
the
foundation
realism, is turned inside out" (Davidson 122).
for
late-nineteenth-century
No longer is writing, or any form
of art, considered to be a mirror held up to reflect the world.
The mirror of
Bierce's texts, Davidson says:
is a mirror held up to consciousness-with all its conscious,
subconscious, and unconscious tricks and turning . . . .
postmodern
literature]
the reader necessarily
[Thus, in
participates
in the
creation of the fiction . . . to make the reader aware of his or her own
limitations,
and,
by
extension,
the
limitations
of human
understanding.
(122-123)
Davidson is thus led to conclude that Bierce was a "postmodernist fictionalizer"
(1) who understood well life's duplicities.
Barren, naked,
and unadorned,
than two or three thousand words.
many of Bierce's stories run no more
His precision in word choice allows him to
communicate specific meaning and at the same time allows the text to operate
at multiple levels and to challenge careless readers.
levels is attested to by two paradoxically
Bierce's style and form.
accurate
The stories' multiplicity of
critical remarks concerning
Starrett says, "The clarity and directness of his
thought and expression, and the nervous strength
and purity of his diction,
are the most unmistakable characteristics of his manner"
(34).
But Wiggins
argues that Bierce "speaks to a discriminating audience, in ambiguous and
ironic tones" (47).
Clarity and ambiguity?
Yes, indeed.
In the previous chapter I pointed out that the critical analysis of
literature
is an effort to determine
and explain why we understand
to a piece of literature the way we do.
and react
New Critics have called for strict
102
adherence
to the idea that the text contains its own meaning and exists apart
Post-structuralists have
from any interpretation a reader might assign to it.
maintained that the meaning of a sentence is always deferred
since meaning
is determined by what a sign is not, more than by what that sign actually
signifies.
referent
Structuralists have advocated that the sign is independent
and maintains a value
only
in its relationship
of the
with other
signs.
These shifts in perspective which we find so much a part of our efforts to
explain the nature of language and literature indicate an inability to resolve
contradictory
ideas like those expressed
by Starrett and Wiggins
the meaning of a given piece of literature.
continuing
interpretation,
interpretations,
interpretations
The
even
as
however,
contradictory
submission
Handelman
interpretations,
accepting
to the
explains
process of
with a multitude
by
of
all
text itself.
unknowable,
much like that of Bierce's and postmodern
unknowable.
Hebraic intertextuality's
satisfactorally deals
inherent within the
Hebrews'
concerning
the
incomprehensible,
is
authors' submission to the
that the Rabbis
allow interpretive
to acquire religious authority and that they ultimately proclaim
tradition
the results of
that tradition to be Torah, "thus beginning to invalidate the idea of revelation
as a one-time, already established,
complete
communication"
(Handelman
202).
Written and oral Torah, two sources of authority, coexist and include within
revelation "not just new legal ordinances, but [the Rabbis'] own discussions on
all matters ethical, historical, and so forth.
expansion
of the concept
What is extraordinary
of the written Torah
very attempts to understand it" (Handelman 202).
(revelation)
Scholem
here is their
to embrace their
states:
103
The unfolding
of the truths,
statements
and
circumstances
are given in or accompany revelations becomes
that
the function of
the oral Torah, which creates in the process a new type of
religious person . . . .
The biblical scholar perceives revelation
not as a unique and clearly delineated occurrence,
phenomenon
examined:
of eternal
unearthed
and
.
new,
commentary.
that
Revelation
needs
evident religious
phenomenon
it created.
tradition, they bring forth something
something
rightly understood
commands
religious
commentary
dignity:
in order to be
and applied-and this is the far from selfdoctrine out of which grew both the
of biblical
exegesis
and the Jewish
tradition which
(287)
Handelman explains
Hebrews
to be
"Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it" . . .
Out of the religious
entirely
fruitfulness
but rather as a
that commentary
is thus
significant for the
"because it is now viewed as being implicit within the written Torah-
in Derridean terms, 'always already there"'
(202).
She continues to say that
commentaries yielded by a hermeneutic study of the Torah "attain the same
status" as that assigned to the Torah itself, for it is accepted as a "latent" aspect
of that Scripture which is revealed:
"Exegesis and interpretation of Scripture
now themselves become Scripture, and emanate, claim the Rabbis, from the
same divine source
as the written Torah"
(Handelman
202).
To understand interpretation as a latent aspect of a text and as
contributing to the meaning
material.
...................
of that text is to
Thus, the interpretation
process
generate further interpretable
is self perpetuating
and
104
neverending.
The foundation for the continuous process of interpretation is
Yahweh, for inherent in the name is a vivifying power which, as the source
of all meaning,
states:
provides "infinite interpretation"
(Handelman
205).
Scholem
" . . . the word of God carries infinite meaning, however it may be
defined" and "God's word is infinitely interpretable; indeed, it is the object of
interpretation par excellence"
(295).
replace the term "God's word"
"its contemporary
origin
producing
secular
endless
If, as Handelman points out, we were to
in Scholem's lengthy foregoing
equivalent,
other text
by Derrida or Barthes" (205).
text, this description
interpretations
could
statement with
of a 'meaningless'
have been
written
In stating that only as "prophets" or "mystics"
can we receive a divine illumination,
insight or revelation of truth (205),
Handelman echoes Scholem's statement that " . . . the Written Torah is a purely
mystical concept, understood only by prophets who can penetrate to this level.
As for us, we can perceive revelation only as unfolding oral tradition"
Only the interpretations
continues:
of tradition afford meaning to the name.
"If the conception of revelation
(295).
Scholem
as absolute and meaning-giving
but in itself meaningless is correct, then it must also be true that revelation
will come to unfold its infinite meaning . . . only in its constant relationship to
history, the arena in which tradition unfolds"
(296).
Handelman explains that
"this unfolding of tradition through the scholar's inquiries
is a highly
creative process wherein the fullness of the word can encompass
contradictions:
wherein,
indeed, contradictions play
a creative role"
(206).
Davidson claims that Bierce is "preeminently (Bierce would like this)
the premodern
precursor of postmodern
stories the disorientation
and ambiguity
fiction"
(134).
of modem
She finds
in Bierce's
life reflected in
105
contemporary
literature.
She
states
that postmodern
"writers
produce
The reader is thereby invited to be an accomplice in perpetrating the text
(128).
. .
.
calculated incomplete narrations that tempt the reader to finish the fiction.
The irresolvability of "The Death of Halpin Frayser" and the blurring of
characters'
and readers'
examples
of
cognitions
incomplete
in "An Occurrence
narrations
requiring
a
at Owl Creek
reader's
Bridge"
are
contribution.
Postmodern writers create a fusion of fiction and life and refuse to distinguish
between what has traditionally
falsehood and truth.
complexities
been identified as fantasy
and reality,
Such writers have not simply sought to express the
and disillusionment
of modem
life by blurring fantasy
and
reality but instead have chosen to utilize form and presentation to
communicate
"Bierce,
the ambiguities and uncertainties
like
many
twentieth-century
as well.
experimental
Davidson writes that
writers,
often
employs
genre as simply another human category that exists to be transgressed" (29).
She identifies modernism in literature by what she calls "the disillusion of
form, the contradictory
self-reflexiveness
perception and cogitation" (133-134).
Malamud's
The Tenants.
of narration,
the limitations
of
For example, consider Bernard
The novel's want of large structure is evident in its
lack of a beginning or an end.
Readers
read until page twenty when they are
informed, "End of Novel," but discover more than a hundred pages are left
until the last page of The Tenants.
Such a postmodern strategy is also evident
in the fragmented structure of many of Bierce's short stories, including "An
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," "The Death of Halpin Frayser," and "The Man
and the Snake."
Tenants
We find postmodernism in the free indirect discourse of The
and "Axolotls"
and the stream-of-consciousness
in Borges'
"The Secret
106
Miracle,"
which abuses
readers'
perceptual
refuses to yield a declarative statement.
extensively
and
cognitive
limitations
and
This same technique is used
in "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,"
Frayser," and "The Man and the Snake."
"The Death of Halpin
"A Psychological Shipwreck" reveals
Bierce's ability to demand that the reader "be an accomplice in perpetrating
the text . . . " (Davidson 128).
preconceptions
This short tale takes advantage of readers'
regarding the role of reader in relation to the text by
commencing with activity assumed to be taking place within the physical
realm.
Subsequently, readers grasp that the activity is psychic, but only as the
character
experience,
grasps this
in
understanding;
a sense,
the
activity
thus the
reader and the character
simultaneously.
"The Death of Halpin Frayser" exhibits all these elements which
Davidson identifies as the tools of postmodern
disorientation,
modem society.
fragmented
the fragmentation,
and
the
writers used to reflect the
alienation
of today's
readers
in
Written in four sections, the story itself is physically
and continually
abuses conventional
perceptions
of time,
disorienting readers and alienating them not just from Bierce and his
characters but from themselves as well, forcing them to question their own
roles in the modem world and their perceptions of those roles.
The solutions
which might appear to resolve the unending questions about who killed
Halpin Frayser, what his dream meant, and who wrote the poem ultimately fail,
and Frayser's dream
does not serve to illuminate his character for the reader
but only to cloud and blur any insight which might be gained:
protagonist incestuous, murderous,
or a victimized poet?
Is the
As Davidson
"The joke lies in the fact that the reader must continually reject these
explains,
107
apparent
solutions
because
they
do
complexities elsewhere in the text.
not adequately
comprehend
the
More to the point, no one solution can
contain the unsettled and unsettling universe evoked by the text" (113).
Whether or not the story is a joke is debatable, but, as Davidson says, "Nothing
resolves [the text]" (105).
moral justification
postmodern
When she points out the "futility of looking for a
for Halpin's
writers:
There
fate"
is no
(106),
she echoes contemporary
resolution, no justification,
no
understanding
of the world in which we find ourselves.
The Hebraic theory of intertexuality,
theory of language, recognizes
words a vivifying power.
interpretation
for
unlike the traditional Western
man's cognitive limitations
and assigns to
As such, it is an effective and rewarding method of
an increasing
amount
of
postmodern
characteristics like those found in Bierce's tales.
literature
displaying
Such a methodology allows
texts to interpenetrate the world of the reader's experience and yields a
greater number of meanings
response
and Herrnstein
variables,
and references.
Smith's theory based
Hebraic intertexuality
draws
Like Fish's theory of reader
on multiple interacting
the reader
incorporates the reader as a character.
Hebraic intertextuality allows the reader's
into the text and
But unlike these other theories,
interpretations
to become
a part of
the text to the extent that the text ceases to merely represent something
beyond the reader; instead it becomes a part of him and redefines even the
context in which he finds himself living in the world.
intertextuality
his stories,
is to embrace
their
Bierce,
indeterminacy,
for suddenly
their "weird,
the
shadowy
To embrace Hebraic
disturbing elements
effect"
(Starrett
become the stories' virtues and the reader's source of satisfaction.
of
37),
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