The experience of a lifetime: philosophical reflections on a narrative device of
Ambrose Bierce
Don Asher Habibi, Studies in the Humanities; 12/1/2002
In his famous short story, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce introduces an
unnamed narrative device to shocking good effect. The device occurs in a liminal setting; that is, it happens
at the intense sensory threshold between life and death. The occurrence is a mental projection, a feverish
fantasy in the surging near-death consciousness of a condemned man. In the protagonist's pre-mortem
heightened awareness, objective time gives way to a radically slower subjective time, and in the space of
moments, he fantasizes a flashforward of escape and survival. Thus, a key element of the device involves a
distention of time. The story concludes when the subjective moment comes to a sudden, crude end, and the
reader is brought back to the world of objective, "real" time. The protagonist is dead; the reader experiences
a range of reactions: the element of surprise, the promise and loss of hope, the tragedy of death, the
ultimate coherence of objective reality, and acknowledgement of Bierce's carefully constructed deception.
The story begins rather abruptly. Before readers have a chance to get their bearings, Bierce throws them in
the midst of an extreme predicament.
“A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet
below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his
neck.”
The objective narrator goes on to explain, very matter-of-factly, the disposition of soldiers for the
execution. Then there is a quick transition in the third person account to the subjective perceptions and
thoughts of the condemned man, Peyton Farquhar. The "swift" stream is now "sluggish," time and motion
are slowing down, sounds are amplified, and he contemplates a plan to escape. The narration concludes the
first section at the final moment before the noose is snapped.
Remarkably, instead of continuing with the urgency of the moment, the next section shifts dramatically to a
flashback explaining who Farquhar is and how he was tricked into his most unfortunate circumstance. We
learn that he is a wealthy, respectable Alabaman planter, patriotic for the rebel cause. A "gray-clad soldier"
(27) impresses upon him the importance of the bridge for the Union advance, and explains to him how it
could be burned. The penalty for such an act of sabotage is hanging, but the intrepid civilian describes
himself as a "student of hanging." This piece of information suggests the possibility that death may be
cheated by a man who understands the mechanics of the gallows. Bierce has planted a misleading clue to
make his flashforward more credible. He closes the second section by informing the reader that the gray
clad soldier is actually a federal scout. Both Farquhar and the reader are set up for some trickery.
The final section picks up the action where the first section left off. The gallows is sprung, but somehow
Farquhar lives! Thus begins the abnormal temporal, physical, and psychological state of the liminal,
distended time flashforward. The reader is given a vivid account of Farquhar's experience as the rope
breaks. He plunges into the river, gets his hands free, takes his first draught of air, dives and dodges bullets
and grapeshot, swims away, and then makes his long desperate trek home. In all the excitement, it is easy to
miss the jump from the third person objective observer to an intense third person account limited by the
subjectivity of Farquhar's experience. Once we are back inside his consciousness, we are clued in to his
preternaturally keen senses, incredible stamina, pain, and elation at having escaped a cruel death. But just
as he reaches his farm and is about to embrace his beautiful wife, we abruptly return to the decisive,
objective narrator. The final sentence jolts us into understanding that we have been deceived. "Peyton
Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the
Owl Creek Bridge" (39). The entire escape sequence was all a feverish fantasy.
The component parts of Bierce's narrative technique are not exceptional. The extreme threshold of life-ordeath situations is the stuff of great drama, and is thus a mainstay in literature. So is the idea of the hero
gaining acute physical, mental, or spiritual powers in the face of grave danger. Framing a story within a
flashback is also a common narrative technique. Less common is the "flashforward," although it has been
utilized since ancient times in such forms as prophetic, symbolic dreams, mystical visions, or fantasies of
the future. We find the phenomenon of distended time in the Bible. Bierce's notion of beating the hangman
is traced to the source of his namesake, the protagonist from the popular play Ambrose Gwinett; or A Seaside Story, which is based on an older Irish folktale. (1) However, the framework of the "flashforward,"
combined with the near-death consciousness of a condemned man who seems to evade death in expanded
subjective time, is a relatively recent narrative combination. As far as I have been able to ascertain, the
technique is the innovation of Ambrose Bierce. Since his short story was first published in 1890, (2) the
main characteristics of this narrative device -- what I call the "liminal, distended time flashforward" -- have
been used successfully in such noteworthy stories as Hermann Hesse's "The Indian Life" ("Indischer
Lebenslauf," the final chapter of his last novel, Das Glasperlenspiel); Jorge Luis Borges' "The Secret
Miracle" ("El Milagro Secreto"); Julio Cortazar's "The Night Face Up" ("La noche de boca arriba"); Ernest
Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro"; William Golding's Pincher Martin; and Nikos Kazantzakis' The
Last Temptation of Christ (O teleutaios pirasmos).
The technique also succeeds on film, because the moving image captures and expresses the descriptive
details of the narrative more immediately than the written word. The motion picture allows us to experience
the perceptions of the protagonist more viscerally. Furthermore, film is better suited for conveying the
manipulation of time (Bellone; Lawson). Film adaptations of Bierce's famous story are Douglas W.
Gallez's, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1957), Charles Vidor's The Spy (1931, also released as The
Bridge), Janusz Majewski's Most (1962), and Maros Cline-Marquez's Ah! Silenciosa (1999). The most
highly acclaimed adaptation is Robert Enrico's dramatization La Riviere du hibou (1962), which was
featured on Rod Serling's TV series "The Twilight Zone," and won the 1964 Academy Award for Best
Short Subject, as well as the 1963 British Academy Award for Best Short Film. Noteworthy films that
utilize Bierce's narrative device are Adrien Lyne's Jacob's Ladder (1990), Martin Scorcese's Last
Temptation of Christ (1988), Paul Auster's Lulu on the Bridge (1998), and Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985). In
addition, other filmmakers utilize some elements of the narrative device. (3) Without question, several of
the world's most acclaimed fiction writers and film directors have incorporated Bierce' s device into the
dramatic heart of their stories. The technique is important enough that it deserves a name and analysis. In
this presentation, I briefly examine the philosophical implications of the liminal, distended time
flashforward and explore the reasons for its aesthetic appeal.
Many critics regard Bierce among the very finest American writers of his generation. One reason he never
attained the recognition and reputation that he deserved was because he shied away from fame and was
totally uncompromising in maintaining his literary independence. He refused to submit to editors who
might alter his words, or to write novels or popular fiction for national magazines. (4) Bierce has a
reputation as a "writer's writer," and his influence is strongest with story-tellers. He is credited with
shortening the short story. His influence is also impressively widespread. The great Japanese writer
Ryunosuke Akutagawa admired him and based "In a Grove" ("Yabu no naka") directly on Bierce's "The
Moonlit Road." This forms the plot to Akira Kurosawa's classic motion picture from 1950, Rashomon
(Davidson, Experimental Fictions 130-33). The great Russian pioneer of filmmaking, Sergei Eisenstein,
cites Bierce as one of his major artistic influences for juxtaposition, montage, and wit (Film Sense ch. 1, es
p. 4-5). (5) Intriguingly, the skillful use of montage in The Spy, Vidor's silent film version of "Occurrence,"
makes it one of the first American movies "to show the influence of Soviet technique" (Jacobs). No doubt,
Bierce would have been amused to realize that his fiction writing techniques impacted nascent cinematic art
forms which in turn influenced the earliest adaptation of his short story on to film. Today, Bierce is best
known for his sardonic, misanthropic Devil's Dictionary and his short stories, the most famous being "An
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."
The seminal influence on Bierce' s life and writings was his six and one half years of service in the Union
Army, and his extensive, horrific experiences on the battlefield. He was nineteen when the Civil War broke
out in 1861. The idealistic Ambrose enlisted as a private and kept re-enlisting, serving in many capacities
as he rose in rank. His jobs ranged from combat infantryman and scout to cartographer and topographical
officer on General William B. Hazen's staff. He fought the duration of the war, participated in numerous
battles, was awarded numerous citations for bravery, was wounded twice, endured capture, incarceration,
and escape, and continued to serve in the post-war South. He joined General Hazen's expedition into Indian
territory in the West and was discharged as a lieutenant in San Francisco in 1867. Although he was
disappointed that he was not promoted at the time of his discharge, he was eventually brevetted at the rank
of Major. (6) Bierce remained in San Francisco and worked at the United States Mint, where he began to
make a new career for himself as a newspaperman and writer.
Bierce's works reflect his obsession with ironic, unnecessary, and strange death, as well as his cynical,
disillusioned attitude on the meaninglessness of life. He saw clearly and detested the absurdity and insanity
of war, and this emerges as a connecting theme in his writings. His protagonists are antiheroes. They make
conscious decisions based on flawed thinking which lead to tragic predicaments. As Cathy Davidson points
out, Bierce' s plots and fictional techniques vary widely, but there is a unifying focus in his fiction: "Again
and again the protagonist is a reasonable, articulate, or even exceptional being who has deceived himself
into believing that he is logical and who dies before he realizes that his prized rationality has been mostly
rationalization." (7) Bierce was committed to living his own life in accordance with reason free from
illusions, although he appreciated the difficulties this entailed. (8) As a journalist, he earned a reputation as
an acerbic critic of hypocrisy, corruption, bigotry , and prejudice. "Bitter Bierce," as some referred to him,
was ahead of his time, and he can justly be regarded as a precursor to existentialism, psychoanalysis, and
post-modernism. (9) But the philosophical nature of his work is far broader: for he raises pertinent
questions about widely held psychological, metaphysical, and epistemological assumptions. For those who
recognize philosophic themes in fictional works, "Occurrence" is a particularly rich story. Stephen Crane's
praises -- "Nothing better exists" and "That story contains everything" (10) -- may be hyperbole, but I share
his enthusiasm insofar as it illustrates a whole range of questions concerning the nature of time, mind,
reality, knowledge, and truth. Moreover, the unsettling effect on the reader poses a range of challenging
personal philosophic questions. "Occurrence" is a finely polished literary gem. As Bercove puts it: "The
story obviously foregrounds the mind-contrived but unconscious fantasy that deludes Peyton Farquhar in
his last moments of life.... Less obviously and more deeply, the story describes various delusions that lead
Farquhar to his death. Least obviously and most deeply, however, the story is not about Farquhar at all, but
about the reader's mind. What Bierce attempts to disclose at this deeper level is that the reader's mind is
inclined to make the same fatal mistakes that Farquhar's does" (Prescription 114). (11)
Before the war, Bierce became familiar with the philosophy of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The son of
Marcus Aurelius Bierce, he studied Plato, Aristotle, the Eleatics, Cynics, and Stoics. (12) During the war,
he read as often as he could, and after the war, he remained well-read in European and American
philosophy. (13) His interest was more practical than academic. Philosophy was a means of building
precision in language, clarity of perception, and a rational account of the human experience. Although
Bierce was a serious student of philosophy and his writings explore philosophical themes, philosophers
have neglected him as a thinker. If and when they take interest in him, they will discover a man who fits in
with the innovative philosophical currents of his day. Moreover, he shares important ideas with the leading
philosophers of the time, namely Nietzsche, Peirce, James, Bergson, and G.E. Moore. (14)
Among literary critics, barely a handful analyze the philosophical themes in Bierce. Lawrence Berkove has
recognized Bierce's attempt to formulate a philosophy of life based on logical reasoning and has expounded
on Bierce's beliefs about mind and human psychology. Cathy Davidson has analyzed Bierce' s views on
language, perception, and reason, and explained the similarities with the Pragmatists (Experimental
Fictions). F.J. Logan focuses on the analytic precision of "Occurrence" and repeatedly contends that this
misunderstood literary masterpiece is philosophy. He also claims that Bierce "invented the drastic fictional
distortion of time." (15) Interestingly, Logan brings in Zeno's famous paradox on the archer's arrow never
reaching its target because it must first traverse half the distance, and then keep on traversing half the
distance so as to constantly come up short of the target. He explains that: "Zeno's assumption is that space
is infinitely divisible; Bierce's, that time is infinitely divisible." (16)
Bierce believed that there was a great distinction between objectively measured time and subjectively felt
time. Furthermore, he believed that this distinction was particularly acute in the moments before death.
This is most evident when we examine Bierce' s denunciation of the new invention, the electric chair:
“The physicians know nothing about it; for anything they know to the contrary, death by electricity may be
the most frightful torment that it is possible for any of nature's forces or processes to produce. The agony
may be not only inconceivably great, but to the sufferer it may seem to endure for a period inconceivably
long.... Through what unnatural exaltation of the senses may not the moment of its accomplishing be
commuted into unthinkable cycles of time? Theories of the painlessness of sudden death appear to be based
mostly upon the fact that those who undergo it make no entries of their sensations in their diaries.” (17)
That a given period of time feels longer (or shorter) to some is hardly a new insight, as any adult caring for
babies can attest. (18) We all relate to time feeling faster or slower, depending on whether we are having a
great time or experiencing the stress of being "put on the spot." But Bierce exploits this familiar distinction
to an extreme. His technique of telescoping time, such that a vivid hours-long experience is condensed into
a moment, may indeed be foreign to our waking state consciousness, but it is by no means a novel or
implausible concept. The biblical revelation at Mt. Sinai, according to tradition, was experienced by the
entire Israelite nation in a singular moment. The text of the Ten Commandments was spoken by God in one
utterance. (19) A popular belief holds that dreams lasting only a matter of seconds can feel like an
experience of hours--as if the brain races on fast forward while the subjective mind processes the
experience in slow motion (Kalat). Most dream research does not support this view. However, there are
many viable scenarios consistent with current research in neuroscience and psychology which can support
the claim that we experience distended time during REM sleep. (20) The use of psychoactive drugs
provides another way to bring out the differences between objective and subjective time. It is well known
that Bierce enjoyed drinking. It is little known that he also enjoyed the effects of cocaine, opium, and
hashish. (21) From his considerable experiences in combat to his pipe dreams, Bierce understood the
subjective nature of felt time.
William James analyzed our consciousness of time in such a way that may have inspired his contemporary,
Ambrose Bierce. (22) In "The Perception of Time," James endorses E.R. Clay's notion of the "specious
present." (23) The "present" refers to the boundary, conceived of as a coterminous between the future and
past. The specious present is described both as a "durationless instant" and a moment that cannot last "more
than a minute." (24) For Bierce, the specious present can linger in duration. His portrayal of time more
closely resembles (and foreshadows) the work of Henri Bergson. The influential French philosopher
elaborated on the sharp distinction between objective, standardized, spatialized, scientifically measured
time, which is synchronized with the solar system and can be measured with watches and chronometers,
and the time that we directly experience, which he characterizes as duree reele, i.e., "real duration" or "pure
time." (Les donnes immediates de la conscience.) Scientific time does not correspond to immediately
apprehended duree reele. Therefore, we feel the flow of time differently from how we measure it. Scientific
time is an abstract intellectual construct that misrepresents the real time of our inner consciousness.
Bergson also rejected materialism, that is, the viewpoint that regards the human "mind" as a product of the
physical brain. Instead, he argues: "there is vastly more in a given occasion of consciousness than in the
corresponding brain state." (25) Thus, in Bergson we find a philosophy of time and mind that can support
the notion of Bierce's narrative device. (26) It is interesting to note that Kazantzakis studied with his
"revered master" Bergson in Paris (1907-09); Borges regarded Bergson as one of his favorite authors. (27)
The distended time technique is far more plausible when Bierce combines it with the "abnormal"
psychological state of near-death consciousness. Extreme danger can and does trigger extreme
physiological reactions. Fear and pain set off metabolic disturbances that bring on heavy secretions of
stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, along with abnormal levels of endorphins, noradrenaline,
seratonin and other neurotransmitters in the brain. The mix can lead to any number of responses for a given
individual -- ranging from dramatically heightened awareness, sensitivity, and increased physical strength,
to hallucinations, brain malfunctions, or fainting. There is no reason to think that dramatic changes in felt
time would not be a part of such intense experience. Moreover, even when a person reacts to the pain of
death not by higher consciousness, but by blacking out, it remains entirely possible that on an unconscious
level or even in an hypoxic or comatose state, the person is imagining a detailed, onei ric impulse that
corresponds to experiencing a future that might-have-been. In "Occurrence," Bierce's narrative plumbs the
depths of his protagonist's mind, in a way that marks "an early and significant exploration of psychology in
fiction" (Votteler 49; Bates 53). He speculates on the processes of heightened perception and cognitive
powers. He builds on Samuel Johnson's famous dictum: "when a man knows he is to be hanged in a
fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." (28)
When the narrator expresses the fleeing Farquhar's expanded awareness, Bierce's literary device resembles
the age-old mystical experience, although the decisive, objective narrator offers a military perspective, not
a spiritual one. The liminal moment may not be sublime. It can occur even under a traumatic, near-death
experience, or in the case of Hesse, making the most important decision of one's life. The device as a
mystical experience turns out to be a more precise explanatory factor in the works of Hesse, Borges,
Hemingway, and Kazantzakis. In "The Indian Life," the hero Dasa experiences a flashforward to the path
his life would take if he leaves the forest to return to a life of a princely householder. He experiences future
decades in approximately fifteen minutes, and this convinces him to remain with his guru and never leave
the forest. In "El milagro secreto," the hero, Jaromir Hladik is a Jewish philosopher who prays to God the
night before he must face a Nazi firing squad. He petitions for one year to finish the final acts of his literary
masterpiece, a drama in verse. The next morning, just as the rifles bear down on him and the sergeant
signals the command to fire, time is frozen. God grants Hladik's prayer with the subjective experience of a
year in order to complete his play. The miracle occurs in a nanosecond. In "The Snows of Kilimanjaro,"
Harry, the adventuresome writer is stuck in the African bush with a badly gangrenous leg. Facing death, he
realizes that he has squandered his writing talent by enjoying the comforts of money, fame, sensuality, and
success rather than devotion to work. As his life is ending, he confronts the painful truth that he sold out his
hard-edged integrity for bourgeois security. His only hope is the rescue airplane that is expected the
following day. In the final section, we have a description of the arrival of the airplane, its take-off and
flight, and its unexpected ascent to the top of Africa's highest peak: "as wide as all the world, great, high,
and unbelievably white in the sun, was the square top of Kilimanjaro" (27). But in the end, the narrator
returns to Harry dead in his tent. The flight to the mystical peak of Kilimanjaro, "The House of God," takes
place in Harry's dying mind. It can be interpreted as his flighty fantasy (a la Bierce) or symbolic of the
artist's rise to heaven. In The Last Temptation of Christ, Jesus is dying on the cross when he is rescued by
his guardian angel, who oversees his recuperation, marriage, and survival into old age as a venerable family
man. After an angry encounter with Paul of Tarsus, witnessing the catastrophe of the Roman attack on
Israel, and realizing that his guardian angel is actually Satan, the repentant Jesus pleads to God for a second
chance in determining the course of his life. He was tricked by the Devil, like Farquhar was fooled by the
federal scout. His prayer is answered, as it were, for the drama takes place in his mind as he is being
crucified. In some indeterminate moment, he lives out what might have been his natural life, only to return
willfully to his agony on the cross in order to fulfill his spiritual mission. The "last temptation" is the
lure of a long, normal life. The dichotomous choice between total devotion to God and the life of a
householder closely resembles Hesse's "Indian Life." (A key difference is that Hesse's Dasa experiences a
flashforward to a life of Princely pleasures and burdens.)
Bierce's device also presages what philosopher-turned-psychiatrist Raymond Moody called the "near-death
experience," which is characterized by "a loss of a sense of time, thought acceleration, and a life review"
(Greyson; Moody). However, instead of experiencing one's past in a flashback, the protagonists mentioned
above all experience a projection into the future. (29) Just as the liminal, distended time flashforward is
likened to the pre-mortem NDE, it can be interpreted as a postmortem. (30) If there is such a phenomenon
as life after death, then continuation of consciousness (in some form) can follow from it. If it is merely
possible that the death of the body precedes the death of the mind or spirit (i.e., if there is any moment of
consciousness or span of time beyond the instant of physical death), then a postmortem experience can
happen. This can be consistent with a materialistic scientific view in the form of the final fling of personal
identity or the brain's last gasp before annihilation . A case in point is execution by the guillotine, where
there is some evidence to suggest that consciousness can continue after execution for many seconds. (31) A
postmortem experience is also consistent with the dualist distinction between mind and body in the form of
the mind's or soul's transition to the mysterious great beyond. The postmortem is the premise of Golding' s
Pincher Martin (which was re-titled for its American publication as The Two Deaths of Christopher
Martin). The protagonist drowns, and the book is about the death of his ego. He struggles to maintain his
personal identity and sanity because of his greed for life, selfishness, and fear. He is trapped in a hellacious
literal purgatory because he cannot let go gracefully. This is also a major theme in Adrien Lyne's "Jacob's
Ladder." (32) Whether we interpret these stories or the others as pre-mortem or postmortem, the narrative
device remains credible. It raises serious questions about the process of death and dying, distinctions
between objective and subjective time, and the potential of the mind in extraordinary circumstances.
The narrative device provides further insights into the metaphysical questions of the human condition and
how humans construct reality. Charles May describes Pincher Martin as "Golding's attempt to write a story
of the universal human need to create the self and a world for the self to inhabit in the face of nothingness"
(1328). May holds that the fictional account illustrates just how subjective and fragile our world-views are.
What Martin does:
“is what every man must inevitably do: create his own reality, assert the self against nothingness, make up
his own fictional experience which he then takes to be reality. In an existential sense, the novel insists that
all human beings are always under penalty of death and must therefore constantly assert the self in spite of
the fact that this assertion is only a fiction and that death is the only reality....In this sense, Pincher Martin is
an example of a fiction that is about the essential fiction-making process of life.” (1328)
Golding's novel captures his predecessor's existentialist angst. Bierce was bitter, cynical, suspicious,
misanthropic, and as disillusioned as they come. When he was the second man to enlist in the Ninth Indiana
Volunteers, he subscribed to a romantic view of war, patriotism, honor, and fighting for a just cause. This
all changed as the war dragged on and took its toll. In July of 1861, he was shot in the heel and discharged.
He enlisted again three weeks later. In the battle of Kenesaw Mountain (Georgia, June 23, 1864), Bierce
was seriously wounded when a musket ball hit him in the temple and remained in the side of his skull. He
survived evacuation to the field hospital, the long, tortuous, exposed flat-car train ride to the base hospital
in Chattanooga, and the army surgeons. On medical furlough, the recuperating Bierce went back to
Warsaw, Indiana, only to be rejected by his fiancee (which some biographers claim crystallized his
negative attitude toward women). Heartbroken, the still wounded hero returned to the front lines in
September. In October he was taken prisoner by Confederate soldiers in Alabama. He escaped, evaded
bloodhounds, trekked through swamps and thickets and survived on raw sweet potatoes until he staggered
back to the Union camp. His innocence, ideals, and faith were shattered as a young man, when he came to
understand the tenuousness of reality (Neale 158; Aaron). As a prominent reference work on Bierce
concludes: "his works are counted among the most memorable depictions of human existence as a
precarious, ironic, and often futile condition" (Votteler 49). He grasped the wastefulness of a vicious war
pitting brother against brother. On too many occasions, he witnessed hundreds, even thousands of wounded
soldiers, crying and suffering as they died slow agonizing deaths. He watched helplessly as the bodies of
his dead and dying friends were stampeded and torn apart by a drift of wild pigs. He saw corpses piled like
cordwood, loaded unceremoniously onto carts and processed for quick burial. He was struck by the
randomness of who survives, who suffers, and who dies. He believed that the finality of death rendered life
practically meaningless. As biographer Richard O'Connor puts it, "he boiled his new philosophy down to
two words: 'Nothing matters.'" (33) Bierce's combat experience defined him, and for the rest of his life he
was a curmudgeonly old soldier. As Joshi and Schultz put it, "for the whole of his life he considered
himself more soldier than civilian" (xi).
As much as Bierce detested war, he was extremely ambivalent toward it. In his journalistic career he was a
vociferous critic of American militarism. His strong public stand against war reflected a keen understanding of what war entails, especially for the young men who must fight it. As a journalist, he hardly hesitated
to criticize the political will of his jingoistic boss, William Randolph Hearst, when it came to matters of
war.34 He was fired and rehired numerous times. Bierce was so anti-war that many commentators hasten to
point out that he was not a pacifist. Yet he remained obsessed with the life of the soldier. As Vincent
Starrett puts it, Bierce was "a Martian; a man who loved war." A topographical engineer during the latter
part of the war, he wrote in 1887: "To this day I cannot look over a landscape without noting the
advantages of a ground for attack or defense....I never hear a rifle-shot without a thrill in my veins. I never
catch the peculiar odor of gunpowder without having visions of the dead and dying." (35) The veteran
understood the exhilaration of total primal awareness and heightened sensitivity of the soldier in battle.
Paradoxically, he missed the excitement of war. (36) The mundane existence of civilian life was boring in
comparison. The camaraderie was impossible to duplicate, and no one could understand him. The Ninth
Indiana Volunteer Infantry remained "the home of his heart in youth and old age." (37) He even chose to
die as a soldier. At the age of 71, he went off to join Pancho Villa in the Mexican Civil War. (38) Today,
the final episode of his life is shrouded in mystery and speculation. We know that Bierce disappeared in
Chihuahua and that he was either killed in action, robbed and murdered, or executed early in 1914.
From an epistemological standpoint, the narrative device leads us to reexamine how adept we are at
constructing a coherent reality, a process that we take for granted. Most neuroscientists and philosophers of
mind now believe that human consciousness can be explained in scientific, physical terms. Countless,
complex physiological processes must be operating in harmony in order for human consciousness to occur.
Our everyday consciousness is a matter of numerous sensory and cognitive functions that gather, filter and
process data, and reconstruct it to suit our practical purposes. Amazingly, human evolution is such that the
phenomenon of consciousness is common and widespread. On this view we are not too far removed from
Pincher Martin, Peyton Farquhar, Jacob Singer, Hemingway's Harry, or Cortazar's unnamed protagonist.
One does not have to be in the liminal state of gazing into the abyss or knocking on heaven's door to create
one's own reality. We all possess this power and use it all the time rather effortlessly (and sometimes
erroneously). In a dream state we seemingly recreate people's faces and mimic their voices accurately. We
can compose and arrange music without a semblance of writer's block. We can be superbly creative,
rational, imaginative, or quirky (Dement). In a drug induced mental state people can experience distended
time, heightened powers of imagination, and a need to reassess their conceptions of reality. I believe that
Bierce's frequent and close encounters with death during his youth made him acutely aware that we
potentially possess far more of our mental powers when experiencing the adrenaline rush associated with
the liminal predicament of facing death.
Encountering the liminal, distended time flashforward in a story also brings to light issues of the reader's
personal construction of reality. Here the audience becomes a part of the narrative device. As Cathy
Davidson puts it, the reader necessarily participates in the creation of the fiction. But as we have also seen
... the reader's participation (being duly "tricked" by the ending) is intended at least partly to make the
reader aware of his or her own limitations and, by extension, the limitations of human understanding. In
short, Bierce more than any other nineteenth-century American writer anticipates the revolutions in ideas of
art and life that characterize the innovative and experimental fictions of the present era. (39)
Bierce's meticulously crafted narrative sets up readers for a major blow to their logic and comprehension.
The author takes advantage of our epistemological weaknesses. By exploiting our confidence in literary
conventions, he speaks to the fact that much of our understanding of life and the world is based on
unwarranted assumptions, false expectations, perceptual and conceptual short-cuts, habits of mind,
provincialism, and laziness. He reminds us how we readily jump to conclusions before seriously
considering the evidence. He disorients and interrupts by effectively shifting back and forth in his narrative
techniques. In "Occurrence," Bierce does not lie to the readers outright, but he withholds information so as
to lead them along. For the first time reader, the narrator's manipulation of point of view is confusing, and
the strategic omissions that set up the sudden, surprise ending are disturbing. The reader is led and misled
by the shifting narratives, and credibility is stretched and strained to the point of credulity.
Bierce planted some contradictory clues to remind us that we are careless readers. For example, when the
fleeing Farquhar looks back at the soldiers firing at him he sees them as silhouettes--but at the same time,
he also sees enough detail of their faces that he can discriminate the eye color of a soldier taking aim. If we
accept both accounts, we are stuck in a logical incongruity. Another example is the subjective narrator's
account that Farquhar "noted the prismatic colors in all the dew drops upon a million blades of grass."
Bierce prided himself on being a "close reader" and he delighted in shaking the confidence of the "bad
reader" (Logan 102). (40) He reminds us that we allow pertinent facts to escape our notice because we are
in the habit of taking conceptual short-cuts in constructing our world view. Thoughtful readers must reread, or at least refigure the story in order to understand both the story and their own suspension of
disbelief. One reading or viewing is not enough to "take it all in." To borrow a term from Julio Cortazar,
Bierce challenges the reader to become a lector complice. (41) That is, the reader struggling to make sense
of the story becomes an accomplice in filling in gaps in the narration. As Davidson explains:
“There is a difference, though, between narrative and the act of reading narrative.... Yet one function of the
particular fictional experiments ... is to minimize the gaps between fictional events and the interpreter of
those events by making interpretation intrinsic to those events. The human limitations, as we have seen,
that lead the reader to misread "Owl Creek Bridge" are the same as those that lead Farquhar to believe the
rope has broken or that, more abstractly, lead him to Owl Creek Bridge in the first place. This contiguity of
narrative and interpretation is crucial to Bierce's fiction just as are his trick endings. Both cue the reader to
the ways in which Bierce works to minimize the distance between writer and reader, to extend the meaning
of the narrative into the reader's life, and, finally, to assault the silence beyond the text.” (55)
The narrative device effectively involves readers in an effort to identify closely with the protagonists. For
example, we want Farquhar's escape to succeed and so wish-fulfillment plays a role in convincing us to
believe his reversal of fortune. It contributes to our gullibility in believing the flashforward. So strong is
this wishful thinking that we overlook the protagonist's shortcomings. Those familiar with the corpus of
Bierce's writings recognize the extent to which he held people like Farquhar in contempt (even though
Bierce himself was captured and fled in Northern Alabama). Bierce hated warmongers who let others do
the fighting. He was also fiercely opposed to the moral evil of slavery. (42) Farquhar is a slave owner, "an
original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause." Perhaps the self proclaimed student of
hanging was even an active participant in lynch mobs. But because of his social standing, he does not serve
in the Confederate army. He was a stay-at-home gentleman. He was also a naive fool several times over.
He was swept up by the rhetoric of war propaganda into a patriotic fervor. He was duped by the "gray-clad
soldier." When the federal scout came to his plantation and conveyed the importance and vulnerability of
the Owl Creek Bridge, he did not bother to inquire about the soldier's background. Farquhar aspired to
cross enemy lines to be a saboteur, without realizing that the enemy sends its people to do the same. He
failed and was captured. Finally, he deceived himself into believing an imaginary escape. Although he
understood the penalty for sabotage, he was caught unprepared. Other writers who utilize the liminal,
distended time flashforward also portray their leading character negatively. Golding's Pincher Martin is a
horribly selfish person. He is arrogant, greedy, faithless, and a cruel rapist. Hemingway's Harry is a falsehearted, materialistic, shallow sell-out. Hesse's Dasa is portrayed very sympathetically, but is an insanely
jealous murderer and fugitive. Nonetheless , we can identify with their immediate plight. We sympathize
with those who fight heroically to hold on to life. We applaud life's struggle to assert itself over death.
Another reason the narrative device succeeds is the liminal setting. There is a human fascination with life
on the threshold, particularly the act of dying and the transitory moment between life and death. (43) This
remains a mystery that directly concerns all of us. The device makes a dramatic play on our emotions.
From a grave situation we have a glimmer of hope and then high hopes. In the stories by Bierce, Borges,
Golding, and Hemingway, just as redemption is within the protagonist's grasp, he comes up short. All hope
is dashed and the reader is presented with the finality of death. We ride an emotional roller coaster of
danger, fear, struggle, hope and despair. We journey from reality to fantasy and then back to a cruel reality.
All the stories feature a skillfully constructed surprise ending that jolts the reader or viewer. What Logan
refers to as Bierce's "whiplash ending" is discomforting, tragic, and most unhappy (108). A crash landing
may be less pleasant than a soft one, but it certainly gets our attention. (Hesse and Kazantzakis leave us on
a more inspiring note, without diminishing the surprise.) The litterateurs and filmmakers challenge the
audience to think deeply on a host of philosophical questions. If used too often, the device might lose the
element of surprise and hence some of its effectiveness, but thus far this has not been a problem.
After we are manipulated or duped, the entire story and our experience reading it eventually makes sense.
In the end, it is comforting to conclude that what we call "objective reality" remains intact. We no longer
have to stretch and strain to see the coherence of the tale. We can breathe a sigh of relief to be back in our
familiar reality. Dreams or hallucinations in fictional works do not have to conform to the way things work
in the "real world." But before we allow relief to become complacency, the ultimate irony is on the
thoughtful reader, who must concede the possibility that what we take for reality may be closer to an
oneiric projection. Or, perhaps this life is quite real but it will end in a fantastical distended time
flashforward. For its grand finale, the brain might put all its remaining powers into constructing an
alternative reality that distracts us from the ugly process of dying or excruciating pain of death. If this is the
case, we ought to ponder the powers of the human mind in terms of th e act of dying and the nature of
subjective time in the moments before and after death.
NOTES
1) Isaac Bickerstaffe, an Irish writer published anonymously a popular folktale in 1770 entitled The Life
and Strange, Unparallel'd, and Unheard-of Voyages and Adventures of Ambrose Gwinet. Falsely accused
of murder, the young Gwinet is sentenced to be hanged, but the amateur hangmen bungle the execution and
he survives and escapes. In 1828, the same story was re-written as a three act melodrama by the English
playwright Douglas Jerrold as Ambrose Gwinett; or A Seaside Story. The play was successful in both
England and the United States. In all likelihood, Bierce's parents were influenced by the pocket-sized
edition of Jerrold's melodrama.
During his stay in London (1872-1875), Bierce used a pseudonym "Dod Grile," which Paul Fatout argues is
an anagram for Douglas Jerrold. For more on this see Paul Fatout (8-9, 97). See also M.E. Grenander,
Ambrose Bierce (38). Lawrence Berkove offers two other sources that might well have captured Bierce's
interest and imagination in framing "Occurrence" with death by hanging. Sam Davis' "The Reporter's
Revenge" includes a passage that contemplates what the final moments must be like for the condemned.
Another source is an interview, "Man Almost Hung," published in the San Francisco Examiner (10 Dec
1889) with a Mr. McCarthy, who survived a hanging. Both provide detailed descriptions of what the
condemned experience. (Prescription 115-16)
2) "Occurrence" first appeared in the San Francisco Examiner July 13, 1890, p. 12. A slightly modified
definitive version appears in a collection of Bierce's short stories, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, 1891.
3) Among the other films utilizing some of the elements of the distended time, liminal flash forward are:
Sydney Pollack's They Shoot Horses Don't They (1969), Irvin Kershner's, The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978),
Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and The Killing (1956), Chris Marker's La Jetee (1962),
Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys (1995), George Roy Hill's Slaughterhouse Five (1972), Tom Tykwer's
Run Lola Run (1998), Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense (1999), Joel Schumacher's Flatliners (1990),
Adam Simon's Brain Dead (1990), Hou Hsiao Hsien's Flowers from Shanghai (1998), and an episode of
Star Trek: The Next Generation entitled "The Pennywhistle."
It is interesting to note that producer Darryl Zanuck, director Henry King, and screenwriter Casey Robinson
replaced Hemingway's Biercean flashforward with a Hollywood "happy-ending" in their 1952 adaptation of
The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Thus, the protagonist Harry Street survives. For the screenwriter's unconvincing
explanation for why the ending was changed, see Casey Robinson's "Adaptor's Views" (4).
4) For an insightful discussion of Bierce's "notorious obscurity" and "underground" status see the opening
paragraphs to Cathy N. Davidson's "Introduction" to Critical Essays on Ambrose Bierce. See also Richard
O'Connor (chapter 16, esp. 283f); and, H.E. Bates. For observations that Bierce deserves greater
recognition, see for example, Richard O'Connor (Introduction 3-7); H.L. Mencken; Bertha Clark Pope; B.S.
Field, Jr.; and, Mary E. Grenander, "Bierce's Turn of the Screw."
5) See also, Grenander Ambrose Bierce 159, 166, 178, 179.
6) The factual details of Bierce's military rank are somewhat sketchy. Unfortunately, many of the early
biographies on Bierce are not reliable. According to Bierce scholar Lawrence Berkove, Bierce was
"disappointed by not being offered a captaincy in the Regular Army," which would suggest that he was a
first lieutenant and eventually was promoted two full ranks (Prescription 6). According to Joshi and
Schultz, Bierce resigned from the army, "angered at receiving only a second lieutenant's commission,"
which would indicate that the promotion to Major entailed jumping up three ranks (xxii). In discussions
with Professor Berkove, he raised the possibility that there might be an interesting story as to how Bierce
was declined a promotion and then received several promotions. If the promotion to a "brevetted major"
was a mistake -- it was one that Bierce himself did not see fit to correct. As the quality (and quantity) of
Bierce scholarship improves, I am hopeful that this question…will be resolved.
7) Experimental Fictions 13. See also 45-46, 133-34. In his recent Prescription for Adversity, Berkove
writes: "Without exaggeration, it may be said that one of the most distinctive (and perhaps unique)
characteristics of Bierce's style of fiction is his conscious use of reason and his treatment of reason to arrive
at conclusions in his stories that call into doubt the value of reason" (84). Continuing, he writes: "But more
important than plot or even character in Bierce's stories is his study of mind. His protagonists are
distinguished by intelligence precisely because he wants to call our attention to their rationalism" (86).
8) See Cathy Davidson (Experimental Fictions, Ch. One); Lawrence I. Berkove ("Heart Has Its Reasons"
136ff). In The Devil's Dictionary, Bierce defines "reason" as: "Devoid of all delusions save those of
observation, experience and reflection." Elsewhere, he states: "All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his
delusion is called a philosopher." "Epigrams," in The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce VIII 369.
9) In the final sentence of Cathy N. Davidson's Experimental Fictions, she writes: "it is time we caught up
with a writer who is preeminently...the premodern precursor of postmodern fiction" (134). For a
specifically Freudian interpretation of Bierce, see James G. Powers (278-81). See also M. E. Grenander
(Ambrose Bierce 77-78, 111ff). For a study on precursors to postmodernism, see David Ray Griffin.
10) These praises were made to Richard Harding Davis. See Stallman and Gilkes (139-40, note 94).
11) Elsewhere in Prescription, Berkove writes: “Bierce wrote fiction not to entertain all readers but to spur
thoughtful readers into reflection. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is Bierce's crowning achievement,
a masterpiece of subtle and controlled irony. Even though nothing else that Bierce wrote reached its level
of artistry and power, with it he touched the level of Swift and Mark Twain, and it justifies the recognition
accorded to genius" (135).
12) See for example, Bierce's "Actors and Acting" (1893) and "To Train a Writer" (1899). A good account
of Bierce's familiarity with ancient philosophy is found in Berkove ("Heart Has Its Reasons" and "Bierce's
Concern With Mind and Man," chapter 3, esp. 70ff). Bierce's favorite uncle, Lucius Verus Bierce published
a book on Stoicism in 1855.
13) See Grenander (Ambrose Bierce, esp. 32, 40, 76ff); Berkove ("Bierce's Concern With Mind and Man"
and "Heart Has Its Reasons"); and Davidson (Experimental Fictions). See also DeCastro (10).
14) The resemblance to G.E. Moore and analytic philosophers is based on Bierce's attention to precision in
the meaning of words. As a topic for future study, it would be worthwhile to explore Bierce's resemblance
to Nietzsche. Both were thoroughly iconoclastic, irreverent, original, and bold -- anxious to strip away
human illusions. They were literary giants, committed to exactness in their writing, and they each
developed a style of composing quotable epigrams. Furthermore, they both were elitists who expressed
contempt for the masses, and misogynists who expressed some of the nastiest things about women ever
written. However, in terms of the manly, heroic concept of war, to which Nietzsche aspired, he is ignorant
compared to Bierce. Squeamish and wimpy, he served as a nurse. In my opinion, it is a shame that
Nietzsche did not read and learn from Bierce.
15) F.J. Logan (106). I would not go so far as to say Bierce invented this technique in fiction, rather, he was
a pioneer in developing it as a literary technique.
16) Logan (111). "Bierce pairs unanswerable philosophical logic with the implacable logic of natural law"
Logan adds. For explanations of Zeno of Elea's arrow paradox as well as the paradox of Achilles and the
tortoise, see Aristotle, Physics 231a20-231b18. Lawrence I. Berkove also discusses Zeno's arrow paradox
in the context of "Occurrence" in "Heart Has Its Reasons" (142). See Cathy Davidson, Experimental
Fictions (124-25, 148n). Jorge Luis Borges also makes use of Zeno's paradoxes in his fiction. Here, see
Gene H. Bell-Villada, Borges and His Fiction (28-29); and, Howard M. Fraser, "Points South" (173ff).
17) "The Chair of Little Ease," in Collected Works XI 365-66. See also "The Death Penalty," in Collected
Works XI 210-224; and Bierce's entry for "Hangman" in The Devil's Dictionary. Cf. Bierce's discussion on
the act of dying in his short story, "Parker Adderson, Philosopher." F.J. Logan (108-9) and M. E.
Grenander, Ambrose Bierce (139, 176) also discuss this point. Bierce's remarks on electrocution as a form
of capital punishment correspond to some reactions to another modem form of supposedly quick, merciful
killing--the guillotine. See Kershaw (chapter 9) and Gerould (chapter 4).
18) For example, waiting one hour in the pediatrician's examining room feels like a boring hour to me, but
to my one year old, it feels like a boring five hours. This is a claim for which I see no need to argue. As
Bierce himself puts it: "From childhood to youth is eternity; from youth to manhood, a season. Age comes
in a night, and is incredible." Cited in O'Connor 321.
19) On this point, see the early rabbinic Midrash Mechilta, commentary to Exodus, Chapter 20:1. There are
discussions in several Midrashim on the forty days and nights that Moses spent on Mt. Sinai preparing to
receive the Torah. Because it was not humanly possible to learn the entirety of Torah in such a short
amount of time, there are interesting accounts of the distended time experienced by Moses.
20) Subjective experiences are difficult to prove scientifically, however my claim does have theoretical
justification. In contrast to the far lengthier non-REM periods, activated sleep is characterized by brain
waves of high frequency and low amplitude, and irregularities of breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure.
The frontal lobe of the brain, which carries out the 'executive function' of planning, organizing, and linking
actions together in logical sequences slows down during REM sleep.
21) See Bierce's letter to Samuel Loveman, May 28, 1911. He writes: "I've been pleasuring for weeks in
New York, and there's always a reaction. New York is cocaine, opium, hashish" (Loveman 24). Letters on
the subject of Bierce's use of the aforementioned drugs and alcohol are found in the Special Collections
department of the Young Research Library, UCLA. See Ambrose Bierce, Collection 277, Box 1, folder V. I
refer specifically to letters to Carey McWilliams from David Starr Jordan (March 14, 1929), from Hugh
Hume (April 27, 1929), and Thomas H. Keene and Maurice Fink (1928).
22) On the influence of pragmatists William James and Charles Sanders Peirce, see Davidson,
Experimental Fictions (esp. chapter one [8ff] and 63-64).
23) William James, "The Perception of Time." Reprinted as Chapter XV in Volume I of The Principles of
Psychology (1890). For a good discussion of James' views about time, see Myers (chapter 5).
24) Principles of Psychology. The quote is found on p. 603 of the 1981 Harvard UP edition. A relevant
quote from Bierce is found in his "Epigrams." He writes: "The present is the frontier between the desert of
the past and the garden of the future. It is redrawn every moment" (Collected Works VIII 369).
25) Here I quote from T.A. Goudge, "Henri Bergson," in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (288). Goudge
cites Bergson's Matiere et memoire. For readers interested in the influence of Bergson's philosophy on film
theory as well as his critical attitude toward film, see Heike Klippel, "Bergson und der Film."
26) I am not suggesting that the liminal, distended time flashforward cannot accommodate a materialist
conception of the brain and consciousness. As I will explain in the text (in my discussion of Pincer Martin
and postmortem consciousness), the narrative device can work with both dualist and materialist accounts of
the mind/body problem.
It is unclear precisely where Bierce stood on the related issues of disembodied minds and souls, life after
death, etc. (It is also beyond the scope of this investigation.) It is interesting to note that he defines "mind"
in The Devil's Dictionary as: "A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists
in the endeavor to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has
nothing but itself to know itself with." It is also worth noting the final sentence in his letter to Mrs.
Josephine Clifford McCrackin (September 13, 1913). He writes: "May you live as long as you want to, and
then pass smilingly into the darkness--the good, good darkness" (Letters of Ambrose Bierce 196).
27) See Kazantzakis' letter to Borje Knos (Oct. 4, 1946), in Helen Kazantzakis, Nikos Kazantzakis: A
Biography Based on His Letters (459). On Borges, see Martin S. Stabb, Jorge Luis Borges. For the
interested reader, cf. "'... Merely A Man of Letters': An Interview with Jorge Luis Borges," in Philosophy
and Literature. Borges mentions Schopenhauer, Berkeley, and Hume as his main philosophical influences.
28) Quoted in Boswell's Life of Johnson, Vol. III, 167 (entry for Friday, 19 September 1777). Another
relevant quote from Johnson that differs from Bierce is: "It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.
The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time." vol. II, 107 (Friday, 27 October, 1769).
29) A difference between the flashback and flashforward is that we can't be as confident in the veracity of
the premonitory flashforward. (Of course, flashbacks can be inaccurate or false.) In "Occurrence" as well as
Pincher Martin, "Snows of Kilimanjaro," "The Night Face Up," and Jacob's Ladder, it turns out to be a
dying man's Quixotic hallucination (although interpretations of meaningfullness are also plausible). In "The
Night Face Up," the flashforward is a fantastically credible projection hundreds of years in the future. In
"The Secret Miracle" the miracle is supposedly true; but, it is only as real as the hero's subjective
experience. (Cf. Davidson, Experimental Fictions 127). As academics, we all know what becomes of those
who don't publish. In "Indian Life," Hesse describes a spiritual experience. In Last Temptation, the
alternative future is Satan's grand deception.
30) In a confused article, John Kenny Crane uses the term "post-mortem consciousness" to describe
Bierce's technique, because this is [supposedly] what other scholars have called it. (I have seen this term
applied to Golding rather than Bierce.) Crane acknowledges that the term is a misnomer, however.
31) The heavy, angled blade of the guillotine slices the neck in 1/70 of a second--so quickly that blood
remains in the head and brain for perhaps one minute or more--enough time for consciousness to continue.
An interesting story on this is the execution of Charlotte Corday on July 17, 1793. (Marie Anne Charlotte
Corday d'Armont assassinated French revolutionary Jean Paul Marat, while he was in the bathtub.)
Immediately after the guillotine did its work, the assistant executioner, Francois le Gros, picked up her head
and slapped her face. According to witnesses in the crowd, her eyes opened, both cheeks reddened, and her
face registered a look of anger and insult before her eyes closed and her face was stilled. On this point, see
Kershaw (81) and Gerould (54, cf. 119). According to Kershaw (chapter 9) and Gerould (chapter 4), some
experiments performed by French physicians support the thesis that victims of the guillotine could maintain
signs of consciousness after beheading.
32) As the screenwriter, Bruce Joel Rubin puts it: "Learning to let go of life is, in biblical terms, the key to
infinite life. I wanted to dramatize what Louis [the chiropractor] tells Jacob when discussing the teachings
of Meister Eckert, the German mystic and theologian. Heaven and hell are the same place. If you are
afraid of dying, you experience demons tearing your life away. If you embrace it, you will see angels
freeing you from your flesh (Jacob's Ladder 190).
33) Ambrose Bierce chapter ten, esp. 174 and 187. In chapter two, O'Connor provides a fascinating account
of Bierce's war experience. An excellent discussion on "Nothing matters" as a key for understanding Bierce
is found in Berkove, "Heart Has Its Reasons" and Prescription chapter 3.
34) For discussions on Bierce's relation with Hearst, see O'Connor; Neale chapter VI, esp. pp. 89-99. See
also Bierce's "A Thumb-Nail Sketch."
35) The quote continues: "I never see a parade of the militia without laughing." "Prattle." San Francisco
Examiner (12 June 1887). Quoted in Paul Fatout 159 (see also 50); and, Daniel Aaron 172.
36) See Bierce's memoir, "What I Saw of Shiloh." Collected Works Vol. I. See also, Carey McWilliams,
"Ambrose Bierce" 73; and Berkove, "Bierce's Concern With Mind and Man" 65f.
37) On this point, see Richard O'Connor, Ambrose Bierce: A Biography, passim. O'Connor also explains:
"He was one of those rare men with a genuine lust for battle; artillery was symphonic music for him,
musketry and the roar of assaulting columns its delightful counterpoint. Ambrose Bierce would never feel
so alive as in the midst of war and death" (28).
38) Bierce was last seen in Chihuahua, Mexico on December 26, 1913, when he announced his intention to
join the revolutionaries in the battle for Ojinaga. He is missing and presumed to have been killed in
January, 1914. In his extensive and thorough research on the life of Bierce, Carey McWilliams contacted
numerous people who might have been in a position to report what actually became of him in Mexico. In
addition to McWilliam's biography on Bierce, the interested researcher will find it worthwhile to review the
materials McWilliams donated to the Special Collections department at UCLA's Young Research Library
(Collection 277). For the interested reader, there is a novel by Carlos Fuentes, Gringo Viejo and a film
adaptation starring Gregory Peck about this final chapter of Bierce's life entitled The Old Gringo. Another
film about Bierce's disappearance is Maros Cline-Marqez's Ah! Silenciosa. See also The Letters of
Ambrose Bierce 195-98 and George Sterling's "Introduction" vii-xi.
39) Experimental Fictions 122-23. See also Berkove Prescription chapter 6. Cf. Nick Zangwill.
40) In her "Introduction" to Critical Essays, Cathy Davidson writes: "Bierce delights in strewing red
herrings in the path of the careless and the careful reader" (9). See also Harriet Kramer Linkin and Berkove
Prescriptions (chapter 6).
41) Cortazar uses this term in his well-known, influential work Rayuela. "Rayuela" is a common Spanish
word for "hopscotch," and the organization of the novel leaves many gaps for the reader to fill. For
discussions on the term lector complice, see Steven Boldy and Cathy N. Davidson Experimental Fictions
128. Cf. Wolfgang Iser, Implied Reader. Iser develops a theory of literary effect and response he calls the
"implied reader." This entails an active process that involves the reader's discovery of the prestructured
potential meaning in the text of a novel.
42) On this point see Daniel Aaron. Aaron points out that "[t]he Bierce clan was antislavery," led by
Ambrose's revered Uncle Lucius, who was an accomplice of John Brown.
43) One illustration of this is made by David D. Perlmutter, who argues that the most powerful visual
images capture the moment just before death.
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Don Habibi is professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where he has
taught since 1988. In 1999 he was the recipient of the Chancellor's Teaching Excellence Award. He is the
author of John Stuart Mill and the Ethic of Human Growth (Kluwer, 2001), and several articles on Mill,
liberalism, utilitarianism, and political philosophy.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Department of English