25 pages • 50 minutes read
Ambrose BierceA Horseman in the Sky
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1898A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Setting
The story is set during 1861, the first year of the Civil War, in western Virginia, reflecting Ambrose Bierce’s interest in the real consequences of the war as he experienced them. Virginia split during the war, with western Virginia remaining with the Union and becoming West Virginia. Bierce shows how the war split every layer of the social fabric: country, state, family, and even individual psyches, as seen when Druse must wrestle with conflicting duties to family and military. The shape of the valley is also important: It is described as wild and savage but almost entirely shut in by cliffs. The Druse household, however, is only a “few miles” away (4), suggesting the violence will not be confined to the battlefield but will spill into the home.
Irony
Bierce’s use of irony—expressions that mean something different (often opposite) from their literal meaning—arises at key moments in the text. Irony is appropriate to this story, which often concerns the limits of human perception. In this context, irony provides another example of how appearances may be misleading.
For example, when the narrator says that the commander “knowing better, smiled” in response to the officer who claimed there was no southern road into the valley, readers are not sure what the commander knows. Does he know there is a southern road into the valley, or does he know that the officer witnessed the horseman’s fall? The reader may know better than the officer that the event was not supernatural. Irony thus highlights the idea that truth is a matter of context and perspective.
Perspective
Perspective determines what and how characters see and may be shaped by physical position as well as mental state and personal history. The dramatic centerpiece of the story hinges on a shift in perspective that changes how the characters see and understand the horseman: first as a soldier falling to his death then and then as a supernatural harbinger of the apocalypse. Druse sees a horrific tragedy (or more accurately, turns away from seeing it), while the officer witnesses an event of divine significance that defies belief. Perspective also enables killing without guilt: Physical distance, sleepiness, and the distortion of heroic ideals and abstractions dull Druse’s sense of his enemy’s humanity and leave him ready to fire.
Point of View
The narrator is mostly, though not completely, omniscient. The narrator knows the details of the landscape beyond the capacity of any character, which highlights the limitations of human awareness. In addition to contrasting with Druse asleep on his watch, this bird’s-eye view suggests a godlike perspective, as does the harsh judgment of the narrator that Druse deserves execution for his negligence. Despite, or rather because of, the narrator’s high vantage point, their perspective on the human scale is sometimes limited. For example, the motivations of the officer in exploring the valley are left ambiguous. The narrator says that it is both out of a “spirit of adventure” or “in quest of knowledge” (7). Druse’s state of mind following the death of his father, like the moment of his waking earlier in the story, is left similarly obscure.
Related Titles
By Ambrose Bierce
