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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: Hebraic

Intertextuality and Critical Inquiry of Ambrose Bierce. Master of Arts

(American Literature), August, 1990, 111 pp., 1 diagram, bibliography, 43 titles.

This study corroborates 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 western language concepts. The Hebraic theory

of intertextuality encourages limitless considerations in textual analysis since

language is perceived as a creative and dynamic force, not merely mimetic. As

such it offers a means for reconsideration of fundamental theories

concerning the natures of language and time in Bierce's stories.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Postmodern Readings ........................................ 1

Past, Present, Future: Time in the Many Different Worldsof Ambrose Bierce ......................................... 16

Backtracking: Two Languages, Two Heritages ................ 38

Ambrose Bierce and Traditional Hebraic Intertextuality . . . . . . . 61

Backtracking and Pressing Onward: The Essence ofPostmodernism 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" and pointing out that modem

hermeneutics finds its heritage in Biblical hermeneutics, Susan Handelman

declares that modern literary criticism is "a kind of substitute 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" (Handelman xiii).

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

models, the continuous generation of which betrays a lingering strain of

naive Platonism and the continued appeal to which is both logically dubious

and methodologically distracting" (209). Handelman says that rigid

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). Herrnstein Smith also believes that narrative and the text are

misconceived. She rejects the traditional two-leveled model of narrative, that

in which a "story" contains the content of a narrative and a "discourse"

1

2

communicates it. She suggests instead that that model be replaced with one

that would allow narratologists to regard formal properties of any individual

narrative as something other than "representations of specific, discrete

objects, events, or ideas" (222). To do so would prevent the "expectation of a

conformity or formal correspondence between any of the properties of a

narrative and anything else" (Herrnstein Smith 222). Herrnstein Smith views

as "functions of these multiple interacting conditions" what other

narratologists perceive as the rigid and formal properties of a narrative (222).

Her understanding of what she terms "multiple interacting conditions" will be

addressed later.

The misperceptions of narrative and text cited by Handelman and

Herrnstein Smith could well be the basis for the continuing uncertainty

regarding the nature of Ambrose Bierce's short story technique. That Bierce's

short stories have remained, to a large extent, critically unexplored until the

past decade indicates the traditional difficulty readers and critics have had in

understanding him as a writer. Bierce's stylistics contribute much to this

difficulty. But the impediment of many critics is their dualistic model of

narrative, that "naive Platonism" Herrnstein Smith so aptly points out as

"logically dubious and methodologically distracting" (209). Even under careful

scrutiny, Bierce's stories do not reflect this dualistic concept of narrative

structure. His fusion of time and events and his atypical treatment of what are

traditionally called reality and dream prohibit clear assessment of the

narrative's character, at least within structuralist narratology. Thus, we find

that Bierce's "combination of realism and romantic extravangance has led

more than one critic to despair of ever classifying Bierce's stories" (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 writings other than those

traditionally assigned to them. I will revise the traditional critical theory and

critical readings of Bierce's short stories by considering Hebraic

intertextuality, a theory of narrative criticism more 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 utterances not as

strings of discrete signifiers that represent corresponding 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 consist of all those circumstantial and psychological

variables of which every utterance is a function. Although some of

these conditions are conventionally implied by and are, accordingly,

inferable from the linguistic form of an utterance, they are not

confined to and cannot be reduced to specific "referents" or

"signifieds." (222)

Herrnstein Smith advocates rejecting any narratological model which views

individual narratives as sets of "surface-discourse-signifiers that represent

(actualize, manifest, map, or express) sets of 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 Smith 222). She suggests that the following variables

construct a narrative: "context and material setting," including "particular

listeners or readers addressed" and "the nature of the narrator's relationship

to them"; and "such psychological variables as the narrator's motives for

telling the tale and all the particular interests, desires, expectations, memories,

knowledge, and prior experiences" (222).

Herrnstein Smith's proposed narrative theory corresponds to what

Handelman identifies as the Hebraic theory of intertextuality, the traditional

Rabbinic mode of textual interpretation. Traditionally, the Hebrews' Rabbis

based their theory of textual interpretation on the assumption that within a

text are "multiple meanings" fostering "endless interpretability" (Handelman

xiv). Thus, the Rabbis maintained that "interpretation and text were not only

inseparable, but that interpretation-as opposed to incarnation-was the

central divine act" (Handelman xiv). When Christianity proclaimed that the

word, God, had become incarnate in Christ, it claimed to have the "final and

validating interpretation of the now 'Old' Testament text" (Handelman xiv).

Handelman contends that the very "history of interpretation . . . has been . .

determined by the schism between Jews and Christians precisely over the

issue of proper interpretation of the text" (xiv). She holds that Christianity

eventually divorced itself from Judaism and married with Greek philosophy,

establishing itself throughout the Roman Empire to become a foundation of

Western culture (xiv). 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 of word, logos, text, and

meaning" (xiv). With their deference to Greek thought, Western critics have

rejected the validity of Hebraic intertextuality and neglected the role it can

play in literary criticism. 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 a

variety of questions concerning the nature of the narrative text, questions

which previously had been precluded simply by the foundation upon which

traditional criticism rested.

Language is traditionally perceived to function mimetically, as a system

of signs representing physical entitites. But such terms as "discrepancies,"

"failures," "ruptures," and "absences" infiltrating literary critical thought

reveal Heidegger's and the post-structuralists' awareness of the lack of

mimetic correspondence between language and the world. Hebraic thought,

however, has never understood language to function mimetically. Instead, the

words which comprise language are thought actually to contain 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. Thus, both

Herrnstein Smith's proposed narrative theory and Handelman's Rabbinic

theory of intertextuality assert a more intimate correspondence between

language and the world than that of mere representation. In "Literature in

the Reader: Affective Stylistics," Stanley Fish proposes a theory of literature

that unwittingly reflects elements of Hebraic intertextuality (25). To

Oman "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. His

theory was reactive to Wimsatt and Beardsley's essay on the affective 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: Affective Stylistics,"

which was published in 1970 (Fish 22). 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, and seems to

overthrow it. (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. Here the strategy of

saying nothing is one of "progressive decertainizing" (Fish 23). He notes the

range of possibilities in meaning in the phrases "there is no," "doubtful,"

"certainty," "improbable," "seems." Then he traces the shifts in readers'

perceptions of meaning with each new phrase. Fish blames the inefficiency

of the statement on its "refusal to yield a declarative statement" (25). But Fish

ceases to ask the question, "What does this sentence mean?" and instead begins

to ask, "What does this sentence do?" 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

that happens to, and with the participation of, the reader. And it is

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" (26) and the

according shift of the reader's perspective on it. "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, not the syntax, the word, the

letter, or any of their alterations. All such elements compose the text, for the

8

text is perceived to be the experience of the reading, the action initiated by the

words.

To accept the statement as meaningful does not necessarily mean that

the statement is attributed a logical meaning. 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). Handelman explains: "Here . . . is the 'logic of

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

boundary of the same and the different (Handelman 53). We see this best

displayed in Fish's second example: "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

exploits the two senses of the word "perceive": the angels do perceive, or

experience, the physical repercussions of their fall, but they do not perceive,

or comprehend, the moral repercussions. That the fallen angels do and do not

perceive their plight illustrates juxtaposition. Juxtaposition is a critical

element of Hebraic intertextuality, for it allows for progressive interpretation.

Because intertexuality presents a process, not a product, it relies on an

9

awareness of a contiguous whole and generates further interpretations based

upon juxtaposition, a continuous series 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. For example, he

returns to his sentence about Judas and argues that readers' responses to the

ninth word in the sentence will be shaped by their responses to the first eight

words. Here we see his inclination toward perceiving interpretation as a

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

readers construct a temporal hierarchy so that the decoding becomes the

event. Fish explains that because readers are presented with the clause "That

Judas perished by hanging himself" 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 (27-

28). Ultimately, it would be "a difference in meaning" (Fish 28).

Fish maintains that any statement, any word, cannot help but provide

experience. This experience, as far as Fish is concerned, is a sort of linguistic

experience. 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

"actively there, doing something" (Fish 30). Thus, he ultimately concludes that

a different meaning results when words are reorganized. It could be

understood, though, that a different meaning does not result from

reorganization as much as a different experience does. To conceive of words as

"actively there, doing something" (Fish 30) is to attribute to words a vivifying

power (Boman 69), another characteristic of Hebraic intertextuality.

Because, for Fish, meaning in literature is activity, the result of a

process engaging readers and a written composition, language ceases to be

solely responsible for meaning. Fish suggests that "there is no direct

relationship between the meaning of a sentence and what its words mean . . .

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, inherent

within it and simultaneously creating it. 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

advocates that language is one constituent in the production of meaning, and

that that production utilizes as well the unique reader complete with previous

experiences and the circumstances of the reading. Such a theory finds

meaning in the interpretation of "sentences (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

kind-experiential sense-out of nonsense" (37). With such a statement he has

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 a rationale for

solipsism. "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

purpose to justify Bierce's stylistics. But I do propose that to familiarize

oneself with Hebraic intertextuality is to open doors upon new paths to follow

in our exploration of Bierce's contribution to American literature. Handelman

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 theology" (xiii), or the extensive application of metaphor

in hermeneutic study. She feels such a "modern science of interpretation" has

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 xviii). I intend for this thesis to support Handelman's

contention that the Biblical tradition of hermenuetics has dominated as the

mode of interpretation within the study of literary criticism. I also seek to

validate her call for an alternative strategy of literary criticism incorporating

the traditional Hebraic theory 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 Shipwreck," which, according 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. "The

Death of Halpin Frayser" and "The Man and the Snake" lie between the two

ends and are considered by many to be typical but yet not preeminent

examples of Bierce's style. What value each of these stories has lies in its

narrative structure and the function of language in that structure. I will

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 of a theory of literary interpretation which will

adequately explain Bierce's stories.

Perhaps the most insightful point Bierce made concerning. writing is

that the great writer works with materials that have no tangible or finite

existence, things "mysteriously insubstantial . . . , spirits of dream . .

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: "What Bierce is most conscious of is the imagination's

independence 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 and

broadened with an understanding of Hebraic intertextuality, 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. I will

stress the value of the Hebraic technique in reaching alternate

interpretations of Bierce's stories. 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

Ambrose Bierce's short stories and their possible multitudes of interpretations.

Several terms I shall be using need clarification. When I refer to Greek

thought, I refer to post-Platonic thought. The terms Hebrew and Israelite are

synonymous and refer in this paper to those who reject the mimetic nature of

language. I do not by any means intend to imply that Hebrews are the only

people who view words as independent agents with creative power. Other

oriental cultures conceive of language as functioning similarly. However, the

current Judeo-Christian perception of an absolute world 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 work have presented undeniably

impressive ideas concerning the writer's stylistics and development of theme.

The two most significant examinations are Cathy N. Davidson's The

Experimental Fictions of Ambrose Bierce: Structuring the Ineffable and M. E.

Grenander's Ambrose Bierce. Davidson's study identifies Bierce as a

forerunner of post-modernism. 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 points out that this ambivalence has resulted from

three overshadowing 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 Literary Scholarship

1977:241). Critical response should be neglected no longer, for Bierce's

writings are the greater part of his mystery. Perhaps to understand them is to

understand the man. However, as Grenander points out, "we have not yet

developed critical concepts enabling us to deal adequately with his work . . .

(9).

16

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." I know of no critical study of "The Difficulty of

Crossing a Field." My analysis will provide the context within which to

consider Hebraic intertextuality as a new method for analyzing Bierce's

stories.

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is Bierce's premier story, "the best

one he ever wrote" (Woodruff 153). 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. The scene is described by an

omniscient narrator who concentrates on the actions of the Federal soldiers

who are preparing the hanging. Next, we are given Farquhar's

acknowledgment of his "unsteadfast footing" and the swirling water beneath

him. 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 . . . ." Then we return to the workings of Farquhar's

mind, to his consciousness 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). These shifts from the narrator's perception to Farquhar's perception and

then back again, which continue throughout the story, are signalled by free

18

indirect discourse, a "version of indirect reporting . . . freed from syntactic

domination by any reporting clause" and characterized by a "tendency to

adopt the orientation, in deictic words, of the reported character rather than

any reporting individual" (Toolan 123). An author's free indirect discourse

introduces his readers to the opinions and perceptions of one or more

characters in order to confuse objective 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. Here

he determines to sabotage them for the Southern cause (12). The last section

"returns" to the scene with which the story opened, 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 Farquhar experiences during his escape.

However, in the last sentence the narrator intervenes again 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). This is the

sentence which creates for readers a problem 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. Bierce's free indirect discourse is woven throughout the

narrative 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 - 11 1 10

19

has to offer. If readers refuse to accept that Farquhar "knew that the rope had

broken and he had fallen into the stream" (13), then they prevent themselves

from embracing the text as a whole, the whole of Peyton Farquhar's

experience. At the story's last sentence, they will reject the narrative as a

dream or a hallucination, or at the very least, illogical and therefore

unacceptable. Davidson calls the story a trap (129), while F. J. Logan argues

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. Davidson maintains, "By deliberately withholding

vital information, Bierce teases the reader into drawing inferences from

insufficient information" (55). But to say that Bierce withholds 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

must then be an hallucination. Setting up as absolute one perception of time

and the world is one mistake inherent in modem Western literary criticism.

Other traditional interpretations of the events in Bierce's story are also

based on linear, progressive time and argue that Farquhar's experience is

20

subconscious, subliminal, or a dream. James G. Powers proposes that the

occurrence of the short story's title is a psychological experience, not just a

physical one and is thus a dream of some sort (279). He believes that it is not

accidental that Bierce describes Farquhar's plunge from the bridge in the

active voice: "Farquhar dived-dived as deeply as he could" (15). By not using

the passive voice, i.e., "Farquhar was dropped," Bierce indicates 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), a phrase he excerpts from the

narrative. However, only two sentences later the narrative tells us that

Farquhar's "power of thought was restored" (13). Powers sees Farquhar's

experience only as a dream or some other sort of psychological experience

outside the realm of the physical. Traditionally, 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). His notion

that Farquhar has devised his own reality is commendable. 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. Since at the end of the story we know

that Farquhar has remained on the bridge during the entire narrative, Crane

can only assume that Farquhar was hanged and dead before we are informed

21

of the fact by the omniscient narrator. Contrary to Crane, I do not consider

Farquhar's experience postmortem 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). I submit that

Peyton Farquhar never dies. His reality is a product of his words and does not

include his death. 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

"suggestive ambiguity or symbolic vitality and compression" (144). But it is a

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

Bridge." Here we learn that the house in which Harker Brayton is a guest

boasts a large wing designated as "the Snakery," where the host, a doctor of

zoology, conducts his experiments. Narrated in the third person omniscient,

the section removes readers 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] might subject him to the suspicion

of fear" (145). 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

seemed about as thick as his forearm. In what way was it dangerous,

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. It was de.LEW-

"matter out of place"-an impertinence. The gem was unworthy of its

setting. (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. At the end of section three Brayton finds the snake

irresistible and cannot prevent himself from advancing toward it.

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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

be a bogy to Woodruff, to Brayton there was nothing bogus about it. Woodruff

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. Readers do not know until that revelation that they are

informed of Brayton's perceptions only.

Bierce's 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. The snake's eyes at first were "two small points of light,

apparently about an inch apart. They might have been reflections of the gas

jet above him, in metal nailheads . . . " (143). Brayton looks again and the

lights are still there, but "They seemed to have become brighter than before,

24

shining with a greenish lustre he had not at first observed" (143). He returns

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). Finally, we read, "the eyes were now

electric sparks, radiating an infinity of luminous needles" (146) and then the

eyes "were two 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. By telling us

the snake was "matter out of place" (145), Bierce enters Harker Brayton's mind

and takes readers with him to alter the perspective of the narrative. With free

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

that readers do not question what it is they actually follow. As Davidson

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

nothing. Wiggins agrees and says, "The climax reveals a psychological study

in autosuggestion" (29). But in another sense neither of these points is true,

for Brayton died, which can hardly be thought nothing. Davidson explains

that Brayton's "language clearly reflects his perceptual hyperbole . . .

Perception here is almost totally governed by psychological projection and

reflects external reality hardly at all" (35). Since Brayton is unaware that it is

25

hyperbolic for others, for him it is reality. Davidson can argue that Brayton's

perceptions are hyperbolic because she has read the end of the story and has

been informed that the snake is stuffed. Brayton never was privy to such

information. Harker Brayton attempts to use words to convince himself that

he is not afraid. Ultimately, however, he succumbs to the words he reads and

believes that he has seen a real snake and that it mesmerizes him. While his

attempt to use language to construct reality without a snake fails, his firm

belief in the word dooms him to death. Wiggins calls Brayton's experience

autosuggestive because there is no live snake and yet Brayton dies as a result

of his belief in the contrary (29). But Mary Grenander may explain the

phenomenon best when she states, "the protagonist reacts emotionally to what

he thinks is a situation of extreme jeopardy" (97). She says:

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' perception of this gruesome

inappropriateness to the real situation is what gives their peculiar

distillation of horror to these tales. (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

realize that what Frayser experiences is only the character's reality.

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

appreciate at this point. Subsequently, we are provided an explanation of why

he finds himself asleep in a forest. Normally, narration is offered by a third

person limited narrator, 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 at Owl Creek

Bridge" and "The Man and the Snake." 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. We learn the

story of Catherine Larue and that the madman for whom the sherrif searches

is her husband, who murdered her. 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 the position Frayser adopted in his dream in

section three to ward off the strangling apparition so like and unlike his

mother. When the sheriff remembers that "the murdered woman's name had

been Frayser" (408), we understand the irony that Halpin Frayser died

unknowingly on his mother's grave and the double irony that somehow her

apparition murdered him.

Grenander 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). She says that

Frayser was murdered by his stepfather. All the other clues which contradict

this interpretation, those which "point to a supernatural-and superficial-

explanation . . . are red herrings" only (111). 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 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

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. As such, it is capable of

physically strangling a man. Thus, it is possible that Frayser was murdered by

a zombie.

Grenander's Freudian theory that Frayser's dream reflects repressed

guilt is unnecessary and gives credit where it is not due. 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 dies-

dies" (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" (397) in order to determine the crime for

which he suffers guilt. "If this passage symbolizes anything, it indicates the

futility of looking for a moral justification for Halpin's fate," says Davidson

29

(106). "Nothing in the story . . . is certain at all" (104-05), she explains, and

then says the story "calls the conventions of reality (and 'realism') into

question" (111). 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: "Vainly

he sought . . . " (397). Davidson sums up her interpretation with:

readers cannot apprehend the death of Halpin Frayser on any logical

level . . . . Interior and exterior worlds, nightmare dream and

nightmare reality, uncertain past and problematic present-

continually meet and merge . . . . The joke lies in the fact that readers

must continually reject . . . apparent solutions because they do not

adequately comprehend the complexities elsewhere in the text . . . .

No one solution can contain the unsettled and unsettling universe

evoked by the text . . . . The text . . . cannot sustain itself under the

weight of its overload. The result is a sham of the whole process of

interpretation. (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 at Owl

Creek Bridge." Because Frayser thinks something, it allows that something to

define his reality, for it is what he perceives. Again, one's words construct

one's world. He never knows he merely dreams that his mother attacks him;

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" and "The

Difficulty of Crossing a Field" are not divided into sections. Both are extremely

short and utilize the first person narrative technique at some point in the

stories. Without using free indirect discourse, both succeed in raising

questions about time and the world. Woodruff complains that "A Psychological

Shipwreck" is "conventional" 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

recover from his failed business. He meets Janette Harford, who spends her

time reading "Denneker's Meditations." For her, Jarrett develops "a secret,

subtle, but powerful attraction which constantly impelled [him] to seek her .

." (495). He tells us at one point that he ventured whether she might "assist me

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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,

not with, but through, those eyes-from an immeasurable distance

behind them-and that a number of other persons, men, women and

children, upon whose faces I caught strangely familiar evanescent

expressions, clustered about her, struggling with gentle eagerness to

look at me through the same orbs. Ship, ocean, sky-all had vanished.

(495)

Here we have the world with which the story itself is concerned containing

another 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 ways, unknowing. (495)

It may be that this passage provides an explanation for the aforementioned

experience. 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 of the omniscient narrative in "Denneker's Meditations"

upon Jarrett's own first person 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). Initially,

Jarrett believes he has been picked up by the passing ship. Later, he learns

that his friend, eloping with Janette Harford but sailing separately to avoid

detection, plans to meet her in New York. He notices Doyle has been reading

and asks to see the book. 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. It is worth noting that readers of "A

Psychological Shipwreck," too, experience, albeit vicariously, the same

experience that Jarrett experiences. So there is no reason that the explanation

in "Denneker's Meditations," 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

two points: Ambrose Bierce's stories, excluding his didactic tales which seek to

uphold a moral teaching, consistently present the world as inexplicable, for in

his stories the world constantly fluctuates and is malevolent in its elusiveness.

While critics recognize the malevolent nature of the worlds Bierce constructs,

they do not perceive the changing nature of those worlds. Instead, they

attempt to interpret his stories according to their perceptions that the world is

static.

The problem with such interpretations of Bierce's short stories as those

articulated by Logan, Powers, Crane, Grenander, 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. Such critics

must therefore submit their interpretations of narrative to 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 any reference to narrative activity" ("Narrative

Time" 170). Thus, in interpreting narrative, Western critics have relied upon

an absolute reality and the experience of sensations. Powers and Logan rely

on the sensual dream experience or hallucination for the formulation of their

theories, and Crane's postulate that Peyton Farquhar has imposed a temporary

reality relies on the idea of sensation, for Crane assumes that even after

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35

Farquhar dies, the character is still "sensing" (desiring) in the heart. These

critics have perpetuated the centrality of the spoken word in Western

philosophy contributing to a distrust of the written text. They have retained a

"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 struggle for meaning in language, woven

together with elements of other ideas and residue of previous ruminations

(131). 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 . . . a linear succession

of instants," 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 defined linear existence.

Blind acceptance of linear time allows for the definition of existence in non-

progressive 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. As

readers, we treat time as linear when analyzing a text. 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.

But we have not even achieved an acknowledgment of nothingness. We have

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. Time is the notion

of the occurrence; it is the stream of events" (Boman 139). In such light

Wiggins' suggestion concerning "An Occurrence 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

37

from world to world. Thus, we might arrive at alternate interpretations to

much literature, 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.

-- w-

CHAPTER III

BACKTRACKING: TWO LANGUAGES, TWO HERITAGES

In Genesis we are told that God created the heavens and earth. The

heaven and earth we term the "world." Then God said, "Let there be light"

(1:3), after which he saw that the light was good and separated the light from

the dark. He called the light "day" and the darkness "night." Thus, we call the

light "day" and the darkness "night" and term their passing the passing of

"time." But attempts to understand time and the world have led to a great many

practical and theoretical debates. Consider the practical level. If on Tuesday I

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 level, the elusive natures of time and the world are

more evident. We operate according to schedules, categories and definitions,

and delineations. But such constructs may be merely society's own creations.

Concepts 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. We live according to our society's own

constructs. Having defined time as a linear progression of instants through

the world, we operate accordingly with great conviction. When contrary ideas

38

39

concerning the nature of time arise, we raise our eyebrows and perhaps

theoretically entertain the idea. We, nevertheless, continue to operate in

accordance with our initial construct defined by society and the turning of the

planets.

The underlying uncertainty which is a quality of life is precisely what

Ambrose Bierce presents in his short stories with "keen, darting fragments"

(Starrett 38) to force his readers to realize that such fragments make up their

own existence. Bierce tears down readers' constructs of the world and time to

undermine the absolute, monolithic positions they enjoy in readers'

consciousness. Woodruff identifies Bierce's attacks on such constructs as his

most significant 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, speech and thought, discourse and truth [was] disrupted" (Handelman

4). No longer do we perceive words to have an essence of their own. We have

developed a system of signs to relate the physical world to the metaphysical

40

beyond. "Unless semiotics confronts this relationship, it can have no

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"

(Hodge and Kress 23). The nature of this relationship between semiosis and

the world has raised questions concerning the natures of language, thought

and the world, and their relationships to one another. 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,

which is referred to (24). Saussure's work confirms Plato's theory of language

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. In

"Narrative Time" (1980), Paul Ricoeur states that "anti-narrativist 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 function and

human experience conceived by some philosophers is a misrepresentation of

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 of

time . . ." (171). Boman, too, believes the linear concept of time is inaccurate

"since the points on any single line are coexistent" (142). Boman suggests:

tfbsppTb 9- i-----,.ll.---"-..,-,-,l

41

"Since the points on any single line are coexistent, it is completely

inappropriate to illustrate time as a line" (142). Both Ricoeur and Boman

prefer to define time in terms of a nonprogressive experience. Boman refers

to the Hebrews' round dances and accompanying rotation as an example of the

rhythm which for them is "the great reality" of the world and time (134). This

idea of rhythmic time, however, is very different from Westerners'

understanding of time.

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 about these issues in

literary theory, especially in its study of narratives. For example, structuralist

narratology, as Prince explains it, not only attempts to summarize and

paraphrase a narrative, but also attempts to specify "what the narrator is

getting at" ("Pragmatics" 529). Authorial intent can be understood to be

synonymous with meaning, however, and can provide an excuse for the

assumption that there exists a content outside the communication which is the

ideal message. Such a perception promotes the dualism which Herrnstein

Smith questions.

Any attempt to interpret a given message requires that both

interlocutors engage in the same system of communication, using the same

semiotic structure. Chris Hutchison states this principle in terms of the

writing act:

The writer is pretending that, or acting as though, the rules

constitutive of making assertions, giving descriptions, and so on,

have been complied with. 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

such evidence, and that he believes the proposition to be true. (7)

These principles have been articulated by H. Paul Grice in "Logic and

Conversation" as the definitive format for maximum effective communication

(45-58). Nevertheless, many writers deliberately flout these principles to

achieve a desired effect upon readers. Clearly, Bierce deliberately asserts and

describes without constitutive rules with which readers have unknowingly

complied. Because stories are in the form of a written text, readers have very

little to say about the communication construct; they either trust it or do not

trust it. If they do not, they probably will not read it. Reading a text is an

indication of a belief in what the writer presents. 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. However, Bierce does

not attempt to define truth or provide "evidence" to substantiate truth. He

merely questions what is commonly accepted as truth without providing an

answer to the question. Many times what Bierce presents is not acceptable to

readers. 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 stories relies upon the revelation

at the end that the foregoing structure 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,

but their connection with the world is only pretended" (8). Hutchison's

statement implies that there is a world outside of words to which words must

normally connect, an implication again based on the arbitrarily defined

monolith of an absolute world. However, Hutchison does qualify his statement

in the next 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 collude with him in imagining that the

world is such that, or that there is a possible world such that, it meets

all the conditions necessary for the sentences he utters to constitute

sincere, non-defective assertions. (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

which they already ascribe. But by the time the narrative concludes, it is

easily recognized that he has not presented any such world. Bierce wrote that

"the capable writer gives [fiction] not a moment's 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. Davidson agrees: "The narrative method itself implies

that one cannot distinguish between perceived and 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" (115). Bierce's work is

difficult for readers only because the readers have placed the narratives in

their own context of the world without considering the validity of placing

them in a different context, one contrary to the typical Western 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 in the

studies of semiotics and narrative. 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 explains that western thought has determined that what is,

simply is (4). In his Cratylus Plato suggests that words, or names, are signs

"JIWAVAKOWAORM

45

merely for the forms of things, since real things cannot be apprehended. In

doing so he raises the question of the accuracy of names and determines that

names contain no truth; they are merely tools used to signify meaning. Plato

was more concerned with whether or not the name properly represented 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 change, but expresses

an epoch-making decision about thought concerning language" (Gadamer

374). Thus, words do not signify but only name true being. Instead, truth is

thought to be apprehended in logic outside of language. To recognize truth,

one need only use reason to construct a syllogistic proof. Thinking "If this,

then this . . . ," the correct formula of predicates, will reveal a progressive and

linear hierarchical 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 something

equivalent to the divine mind, and a first principle, or instrument of creation"

(100). Thus, 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 "Word" as simply

another name for God, not as the essence of God. God and word are now

divorced. So develops the belief that language must be transcended, 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

Aristotle's theory of metaphor, which relies on a distinction between the

"sensible" or "literal" and the "nonsensible" or "figurative" (16). 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). Eastern thought,

unlike Western thought, has remained 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

preserved" (Handelman 20).

Because Christian thought developed on the Greek foundation,

Handelman says it is "predominantly lexical and metaphorical, whereas the

-, -t I MAW-

47

Rabbinic mode [is] predominantly propositional and metonymical" (55). While

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). This results in "substitution, election,

identification, and cancellation" (Handelman 55); thus, differences, however

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 of Christ, the

word become flesh (John 1:14). 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 . . . . I have become all things to all men . . . . (I Cor.

9:20-22)

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). "The sense

remains the same although, as regards form, the interpretations are opposites"

(Boman 121).

As both Boman and Handelman explain, the world is objective for the

Greeks, a given quantity easily apprehended with the senses, particularly

sight. 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). Boman

paraphrases Plato: "Perception is of decisive significance for philosophy, for

all our concepts, including that of time, are given through sight" (115). 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'. In fact,

Boman explains, "The Israelite-oriental 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

of a system of signs to represent being. "It [is] a mighty and dynamic force . . .

" (Boman 58). This is evident, as Boman notes (58), in the book of Jeremiah in

Hebraic scriptures: "'My word, is it not like a fire,! A hammer that shatters the

rocks?"' (23:29). Boman points out that it is impossible for the Hebrews to

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. 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. Sound is auditory

perception, but utterance and word are essentially 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." The scripture is

typical for the Hebrews since "it is characteristic of the Hebrews that their

words effect . . . ." (Boman 69). The Greek word merely is and cannot therefore

initiate or activate (Boman 69). 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). Boman uses the following diagram to illustrate "the point of

intersection between two entirely different ways of conceiving of the highest

mental life" (68):

50

drive forward gather, arrange

speak speak, reckon,think

Word

Reason Deed

From Thorlief Boman's Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek. Philadelphia: West-minster Press, 1960, p. 68.

The above diagram illustrates that word (dabhar, logos), central to all

communication, 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. This is the typical Hebraic perception of how

language operates. 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 active creative power inherent in language, as far

as the Greeks are concerned. Boman explains that the Hebrew word shem

51

means "name" but can be understood to mean Yahweh's appearance since the

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

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. "Dabhar is

always the act of one mind . . . " (Boman 69). Indeed, "The great men of Old

Testament religion 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). Such a

perception is metonymic. 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. It is even found

inherent within their art. 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). While the

Greeks sought beauty in the representation of stasis, the Hebrews relied on the

activity of impressions left on the senses to construct beauty. Plato defined art

52

as a mirror, and the Greek artists were naturalists and realists reflecting their

impressions of nature. But for the Israelites "the beautiful needed to have no

graceful, harmonious form. They found the highest beauty in the formless"

(Boman 89) and were more concerned with impressions and sensations than

representations. Says Boman, "The Israelite poets are impressionists; they

repeat only their impressions," not the logic or reason of form (87). 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 each material thing as having inherently a

"comprehensible content" (Boman 90). Thus, the significance of the physical

object is not its form nor its mimetic property but rather its essence. In Song

of Solomon 5:13 we read: "His cheeks are like a bed of balsam,/ Banks of sweet-

scented herbs;/ His lips are lilies,/ Dripping with liquid myrrh." Boman points

out that we tend to subordinate "sense-impressions," 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. For the Israelites, however, the secondary

sense-impressions 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 are called towers (8.10), fawns (7.4), and date-clusters (7.8)"

(Boman 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. If each of the previous images is merely one

characteristic 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. Metaphor or substitution

rely on mimesis and representation; they are not a part of Hebrew thought.

This property is distinctly Greek. 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

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 never effaces difference. Handelman explains that the is, the

metaphor, is replaced by the "how much more so," the metonymical, a relation

of likeness dependent upon possibility, an if (53). Possibility always remains

only possible. It cannot become a certainty because the relationship between

word and idea is not one of metaphorical substitution. Thus, the literal is

never cancelled (Handelman 54). There are no categorical statements as in

Aristotle's hierarchy; there are no proofs precluding further discussion; there

is no absolute truth outside of the word and its never ending possibilities.

Conclusions are always relative and subject to further interpretation,

application, revision, and extension (Handelman 39). Various interpretations

and multiple meanings exist simultaneously, 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

I

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" 182). What such statements

reveal is the importance we attach to space. For Westerners, who perceive

themselves existing within an encapsulated 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 element of the whole, each individual's experiences and

psychical content contributes to a "collective consciousness" (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). As

such, events within a whole are also seen as wholes themselves. Boman

56

explains that this unity of events cannot be severed or even analyzed in terms

of a linear progression: "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 rotation, never ends and is "the great reality" of the world

(Boman 134). While their repercussions can be mitigated or augmented by

successive deeds, the events themselves 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). Thus, as Boman points out, the

Hebrews necessarily perceive 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. It

should be clear to everyone, however, that time neither lies, stands,

nor is, but goes, comes, and becomes. (Boman 142)

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Hebrew verb tenses do not and cannot reflect time as our tenses can since they

do not work within our framework of three time-spheres (past, present, and

future). 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, is being

engaged in, or will be completed (Boman 144). 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 136).

Because their spatial images have not become entrenched in time,

Hebrew images and expressions for time are "simple, clear, and without inner

contradictions" (Boman 142). Temps can be translated by the word time, but in

place of duree, duration, Boman prefers the term "occurrence" to explain

Hebrew thought. But he explains that by "occurrence" he does not mean an

independent 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 time as progressive movement along either a circular

line or a linear line. As Boman explains, the circular line is used to represent

"objective, physical, astronomical and measurable time" while the linear line

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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). What is

critical here is that both representations reveal Westerners' perception of

time according to the metaphor of a line. This emphasis on order of

presentation and spatial and temporal locus in narrative is inherent in

'Western ontology because such an ontology rests upon Aristotle's legacy, the

emphasis upon logic and the hierarchy that supports it. But the value of such

a legacy is debatable since the Hebrews effectively construct narratives and

yet do not believe that spatial and temporal concerns are 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 39); events are indestructible historically abiding facts

(Boman 139). Handelman's ideas echo Boman when he says, "The

consequences of events can be altered, but the events themselves can never be

altered" (126). Nothing is allowed to be "irrelevant" or outside its scope.

Boman 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. Since the word is connected with its

accomplishment, that dabhar could be translated 'effective 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" (Boman 65). Nevertheless, Boman goes on to say that

while not separating word from deed, the Israelites still experience the failure

of promising words, "not in the fact that the man produced only words and no

deeds, but in the fact that he brought forth a counterfeit 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 truth

hidden by the words comprising the text. In contrast, the Hebraic concept of

textual interpretation relies upon the understanding that truth is an essence

inherent within the words comprising the text, and textual interpretation is

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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 cannot help influencing our

perceptions of a piece of literature. 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' successful manipulation of readers' preconceptions about

language. It stands to reason if our perceptions of language were to change,

so would 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. In this chapter, I shall

evaluate each of the five stories in this study according to, first, the nature of

time; second, the nature of language; third, the nature of narrative; and,

fourth, the nature of discourse. These observations will allow us to formulate

alternate realities represented 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 an unusual reading experience which requires them to

move beyond their preconceptions regarding language.

61

62

Ambrose Bierce advocated: "We think in words. We cannot think

without them" ("Works" 10:59). Thus, the terms we use to express our concepts

are simultaneously inherent within our thoughts. Such a view of language is

contrary to others', such as Jakobson's contention that language is a complete

and reductive self-regulating entity characterized by interrelatedness and

governed by laws of structural integration (Davidson 9). As Davidson points

out, "To reduce an act of communication 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 stories are not built

upon words which formulaically and hierarchically 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"' (qtd. in Wiggins

31). If words can only represent, there is nothing with which to communicate

the 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. This idea is termed "Hebraic

intertextuality." "Again, melody is a most accurate representation of this

concept. In melody, past, present, and future are simultaneously bound

together in rhythmic alternation and an indivisible whole. Modern literature

has many parallels to this type of time consciousness, most obviously in the

stream-of-conciousness technique" (Handelman 36). Many of Bierce's short

stories employ this stream-of-consciousness technique and often carry

unaware readers along within a character's thoughts and invite the

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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). Thus, it could be

said that stream-of-consciousness 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 experience outside the traditional Western metaphysics of

literary interpretation and invites a completely different 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

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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. Initial preoccupation with whether chronology in

the narrative is linear or nonlinear is secondary 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 the

sensible (i.e., the signifier) to the nonsensible (i.e., the signified). There are

no opposing poles to move between. Instead, the movement is into the text, a

progressive interpretation. Handelman points out that, in "From Work to Text,"

Roland Barthes defines the post-structuralist text as variegated and reliant

upon the reader for its perfection (50). She goes on to say that Barthes'

definition is also "inadvertently Rabbinic sensibility" (50). Barthes states that

"the theory of the text can coincide only with the activity of writing" (81).

This principle functions on various levels. The way Peyton Farquhar uses

words creates his world and becomes a text in itself. The way readers use the

same words parallels the character's usage and in the process becomes a

constituent of another text, the readers'. However, this text can be said to be

independent of Farquhar's. 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" (14). Such was Farquhar's experience; this is

his text. 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 that words are beyond simple signifiers would substantiate Logan's

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 compose the whole text. Farquhar's

experience is complete 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). That

Farquhar "was as one already dead" could be read as a simile. However, the

line could also be read as a the citation of a juxtaposition. Since a dead man

cannot awaken, Farquhar is dead and alive. Or at least he is experiencing both

so close together that readers, and probably Farquhar, cannot distinguish

between the two. 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. There is no is and

is not, only a juxtaposition. Readers must identify Farquhar's experience as

the character's reality but then juxtapose that identification with the rest of

readers' texts. 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 Aristotle could not reconcile. Instead of

polar opposites which stand as independent and equal entities, the Hebrews see

predicates retaining their independence and still not cancelling each other

out, thus generating further interpretation. Boman explains that this

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phenomenon results from the Hebraic concept of contemporaneity, which

allows everyone to become "contemporaneous 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 acquired for the remainder of his life"

(143). Just as Rabbinic thinking presents us with a process and not a product,

so does Farquharian thinking; general and particular, inside and outside, are

not seen as independent categories. In Rabbinic interpretation they mesh to

create an element of the contiguous whole, another if to consider in the

search for truth. 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 stimuli-

determine a character's responses to what they naively choose to regard as

external reality," implying that Bierce's characters are out of touch with

"real" reality. "Fooled into death," she says, "that character can only try,

unsuccessfully, to fool himself out again" (13). But the fact remains that the

attempt to escape death was successful. 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. Ricoeur has

postulated that "the existential now is determined by the present of

preoccupation, which is a 'making-present,' inseparable from awaiting and

retaining" ("Narrative Time" 173). I suspect that only with a marriage of this

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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 thus includes interpretation, and because

Torah is creation and ever-changing, so is interpretation 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 are intimately interconnected, word and thing are inextricably

bound; the signifier-signified relationship is inappropriate since the word is

the actual characterization of the "spirit" of the thing (Boman 60-61). One

must understand 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. Thus, Peyton Farquhar's word usage

metonymically constructs his reality, and he escapes.

The intertextuality of the Rabbinic theory of interpretation allows texts

to interpenetrate the world of readers' experiences. Handelman points out that

z- W-

69

for the Jews not just readers' experiences but even interpretation is included

in the text, for interpretation principles were disclosed at Sinai with the text.

As such, the application of these principles yields not additions to the text, but

innate characteristics of the text. Moreover, Handelman states that "whatever

is deduced by common human reasoning is given the same authority and status

as that which is derived from the divinely given hermeneutic principles" (41).

Readers adhering to such principles can assign to Peyton Farquhar's

reasoning the same divinity and authority as that which is derived from the

divinely given hermeneutic principles assigned to all text. They can also

determine that Farquhar escapes his death by creating an alternate reality, or

redefining ontology. This interpretation is drawn directly from the text since

readers travel with Farquhar until Farquhar is struck "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 word's vivifying power. Western thought's assumption of

finality conceives of each element of a narrative independent of what

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 at Owl Creek Bridge." Contextual reading is fundamental, and all

units are so closely interwoven and contemporaneous that none can ever be

considered divorced from any other. 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 thought from within

in order to reap from it its yield of might bes. 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" that "hurt his ears like the

thrust of a knife" (11). 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 separated from readers' experiences nor from

Farquhar's experience. 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, in the fourth paragraph of the first section, we read:

These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant 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. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. H e

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. How slowly it appeared to move! What a sluggish

stream! (10-11; emphasis Linkin's)

Linkin explains that in this passage we see a narrative transfer occur.

Previously readers have perceived the narrator as merely a "camera

recording data" (Linkin 140). Initially, "the linguistic structure of this

paragraph seems to conform to the military narrator's idiolect" and allows

readers to determine even a pattern of speech (Linkin 140). Soon, however,

readers obtain a new "location" with Bierce's introduction of ambiguous

personal pronouns and confusing referents (Linkin 140). Eventually readers

find themselves inside Farquhar's thought process. 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 an active rather than a passive agent in interrelationship with the

world" (1). Merrell asserts that the next logical assumption is that artistic

creation does not entail the mind's merely copying reality. Rather, the mind

"'invents' hitherto unknown realities and thus 'transforms the world,' in the

sense that it constantly penetrates the physical world to reorganize and

reinterpret it" (1). Employing free indirect discourse, Bierce intrudes his

voice upon Farquhar's experience to ensure 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. This would not be evident if

Bierce did not punctuate the entire narrative with his own omniscient remark

that "Peyton Farquhar was dead" (18). 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 of metonymy further, consider that

according to Handelman a meaning "uncovered through interpretation never

dispenses with the particular form in which it is clothed" (75). Thus, it is

critical to consider and determine Farquhar's experience 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. Farquhar's perception

of the experience is just as relevant as another's since the experience is

intertextual and includes all perspectives. Remember, according to Rabbinic

11. 1 "'ll- 1 11 , , , - "- , I Im

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thought, the text always exceeds any interpretation which can be given it, and

hence does not provide an adequate meaning that can be finalized or

completely fulfilled. 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. They are left only with another might be,

another consideration, a continuing interpretation and are no closer to the

truth. Even though the omniscient narrator commands authority at the end of

the story, readers have experienced an escape from death with someone. If it

was not Peyton Farquhar, who was 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, "Catherine Larue," the irony of

which we fail to appreciate at this point. Subsequently we are provided an

explanation as to why he finds himself asleep in a forest. He falls asleep again

and dreams this time. We travel with him through the forest in his dream

until a terrifying ghostly apparition of his mother appears, and the section

ends. In section two we are provided with the character's background

information, just as in section two of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." In

section three we return to the confrontation 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. When the

sheriff remembers that "the murdered woman's name had been Frayser" (408),

we understand the irony that Halpin Frayser died unknowingly on his

mother's grave and the double irony that, in some form and fashion, that

apparition murdered him. Halpin 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." Thus, "The Death

of Halpin Frayser" reverses the narrative circumstances found in "An

Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" to startle readers again and to prevent them

from resolving 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. Like the

second section of Peyton Farquhar's story, Halpin Frayser's 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). Having already entered

the character's consciousness 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. His use of the past perfect tense

establishes 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 subjected to such interpretation because the time of our

preoccupation was first measured by the natural environment, shifting light

and seasons ("Narrative Time" 172). 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 m WNNWMNWANWWM -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," inseparable from awaiting and

retaining. It is because, in preoccupation, concern tends to contract

itself into this making-present and to obliterate 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; rather, time is defined by

experiences. 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 thought he came to

a parting of ways . . . ." It is only at the end of the tale that we see the text as

an indivisible whole; 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? Or did

he experience both? While these questions are necessarily impossible to

answer, several narrative techniques in this story can be analyzed from the

Rabbinic viewpoint to gain a multitude of considerations about what the text

can 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). Barthes conceived of readers

as writers too; readers actively participate in creating the meaning of any

written composition, an idea akin to Fish's, that readers themselves "make"

literature. 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, like Peyton Farquhar, experiences heightened sensory

awareness. The trees are noxious, and "audible and startling whispers" of

"creatures so obviously not of earth" fill his ears (397). Readers must accept

Frayser's experience as valid and incorporate it into their own text. Readers

use a character's words even while creating their own text different from the

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character's text, for the character's is a constituent of their own text. Consider

the context of Frayser's dream. 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. But there exists

a text even at a different level in Halpin Frayser's tale. Not only are readers

provided with Frayser's 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 the matter the second written text, as far as readers initially

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. Jaralson owns Bayne's

collected works, and "that poem is not among them" (408). Had the poem been

written by Bayne and inadvertently left out of the published collection, it

would at least have been completed. Bierce even provides foreshadowing to

prepare us. Although Halpin Frayser had never before written poetry and

"could not have written correctly a line of verse to save himself . . . , there was

no knowing when the dormant faculty might wake . . . " (399). Thus, the

question most likely seems to be, "Under what circumstances did Halpin

Frayser write that poem?" not "Who wrote the poem?"

80

In attempting to answer such a question, we find the importance of the

Hebraic idea of progressive interpretation, a consideration of all those

continuing what ifs. The poem was composed in a dream but found on a dead

body. Frayser dreamed he was a poet, but readers are told he was not but might

be. 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. Readers cannot reconcile all these elements of the text. What

produces the poem? Stream-of-consciousness, or actual manual activity?

Both. 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 poem is closely

aligned with the principle of juxtaposition. 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, a

helpless mortal, a penitent, an unoffending poet" (397). Then the omniscient

narrator intrudes and tells us, "Halpin Frayser was a poet only as he was a

penitent: in his dream" (397). Automatically, readers remove the omniscient

narrator's statement from Frayser's text and deem it objective information.

But according to Rabbinic modes of interpretation, this is unacceptable since

all elements of the text (time, experience, sensation, being) cohere and are

self-contained within the text which is all that exists, and thus the text defines

101,14,10% tlllll - - - - 0 wwammomm

81

the world. Thus, Halpin Frayser is a poet, even while he is not. This

paradoxical element of juxtaposition pervades the short story. 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. Indeed, while "Halpin Frayser dreamed that he was dead"

(402), he was dead. How can one dead dream of death? There is no is and is not,

only a juxtaposition. Just as with "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" readers

need to identify Frayser's experience as the character's reality but then to

juxtapose that identification with the rest of readers' texts to create another

world. 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 Western thinking cannot provide insight

into "The Death of Halpin Frayser." Each portion of the text is not a discrete

unit firmly established in its chronological position; all units are so closely

82

interwoven and simultaneously present that none can be considered in

separation from any other at any given moment. We cannot simply say Halpin

Frayser lies down; he sleeps; he awakens and speaks; he dreams; he dies. This

may appear to be the case, at least as long as we follow Halpin Frayser. But

when we follow Holker and Jaralson to the discovery of the dead Frayser,

suddenly this string of events is questionable. 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. Time is not so great a

concern in this story. 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. Rather it merely studies Harker Brayton and explains his

presence in Dr. Druring's house and describes the environment within which

the events take place in that house. Here the concept 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 other two stories, this intertextuality introduced with the

stream-of-consciousness technique. In chapter two it was noted that the key

to the success of "The Man and the Snake" lies in Bierce's use of stream-of-

consciousness, for it allows readers to acquire Brayton's perceptions, which

they retain until they encounter Dr. Druring's perceptions at the end of the

story. Even though the written text informs readers that 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). The texts that readers compile thus change accordingly to

incorporate Dr. Druring's text.

This change reflects the principle of metonymy in "The Man and the

Snake." Each text compiled is an association of the whole and is required to

formulate any hypothesis concerning what actually happened in the story,

oamom,

84

for many things happen simultaneously. A snake with "two dazzling suns"

(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 to be

represented. Both texts merely provide two interpretations, two

preoccupations of a fluid ontology, both valid, both understandable and

simultaneous. It is likely that readers' interpretations provide 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; "its two

eyes were two shoe buttons" (148). Thus, the snake is both animate and

malignant and stuffed and inanimate. Again, we see the importance of an

85

interpretation that allows for consideration of a multitude of what abouts or

possibilities and a subsequent corresponding shift of interpretation

concerning what is. Davidson's claim that "external stimuli . . . determine a

character's responses to what they naively choose to regard as external

reality" (13) is again arguable. Bierce tells us, "These thoughts shaped

themselves with greater or less definition in Brayton's mind and begot action"

(145). 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 is a 'making-present"'

("Narrative Time" 176). Words define Brayton's reality as much as they define

Davidson's. 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 again that interpretation is not outside

the text but is a textual constituent which intrudes upon readers' experience.

This fluidity which allows the all-embracing 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). The preceding excerpts relay a subtle

transition in narrative perspective. 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). Because of the

ambiguity of the phrase "it seemed to him," readers are unable to determine to

which narrator the statement belongs. Initially it is reasonable to attribute it

to an omniscient 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 without being able to

identify consistently who is who when. This ambiguity is in essence the

tychism Peirce articulated and is essential to the nature of this story seen

Hebraically or otherwise.

Grenander points out that in order to be successful terror stories must

produce 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; and those in

which the actual situation is harmless, 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. (94)

Grenander's last statement is especially 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, for all

perceptions of reality must align with each other. But it must be remembered

that according to Hebraic intertextuality no character misconceives since

there is no identifiable absolute reality; a character may merely conceive

contrary to readers. 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 sinks. Jarrett

awakens aboard the City of Prague to discover that his body, at least, has

remained there through the duration of the ship's passage. He discovers

Doyle, his travelling companion, has also been reading "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. Until halfway through the story, it appears

there exists only one text. William Jarrett, the first person narrator, informs

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 this first person narration, even when

they later read the following passage from "Denneker's 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

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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 ways,

unknowing. (495)

Readers assume they have yet to encounter Jarrett's being drawn away and

apart from his body for a season. 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-of-

body experience. What prevented them from recognizing this fact in the

beginning was that Jarrett 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, Jarrett,

Doyle, and Miss Harford, and, initially, at least, Jarrett's text. 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

readers' perceptions of what they read are controlled by the narration. This

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." Nothing remains to be reconciled, for neither

a reader nor Jarrett is privy to information the other does not have; Jarrett's

text has become readers' text in this case. Instead, what makes this tale

noteworthy is that it reverses the techniques Bierce uses in his previous tales

to achieve, nevertheless, the same effect. A strange inexplicable event has

90

occurred; how is it to be integrated into the readers' texts? Graciously, Bierce

has provided us with an answer to that question in the form of "Denneker's

Meditations." :Davidson declares that Bierce's "stories delineate multiple levels

of language and inconsistencies between them" (14), but "A Psychological

Shipwreck" is not one of them. What is interesting here is that the same effect

is achieved through a new method, first person narration. Previously, the

shifting narrative point of view typical of free indirect discourse concealed

the multiplicity of texts within the story until the tale's end. Here, the

technique is reversed, 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

sections. Thus, we have no switching from past to present in terms of a linear

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. Contemporaneity,

he explains, allows everyone to become "contemporaneous 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 acquired for the remainder of his

life" (143). 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. If readers continue to adhere to the concept of a

linear chronology, they will struggle to determine when, along the schemata,

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the events recorded did occur. Doyle assures Jarrett that Jarrett has been

"right as a trivet all the time, and punctual at [his] meals" (496). And yet

Jarrett and Janette Harford have become well acquainted aboard the Morrow

(495). On the other hand, an analysis of this event from the Hebraic point of

view explains the event in terms of simultaneous experiences, one of which

does not necessarily cancel out or substitute for the other. This same point also

reveals juxtaposition functioning integrally in "A Psychological Shipwreck."

While Jarret is aboard the City of Prague, he is also aboard the Morrow,

existing within the same and the different simultaneously. Again, we are

reminded of Riceour's postulate that the now is constructed by preoccupation,

and that preoccupation is a "making-present" ("Narrative Time" 173).

"A Psychological Shipwreck" is a beautiful example of the Hebraic

concept of progressive interpretation 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," he is also faced with the contemporaneity of having

experienced the text. We are reminded of the principle within Hebraic textual

interpretation that grasped reality replaces representation. Like our

experiences with Bierce's previous 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. An

objective narrator begins the tale 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. Immeditately in front of the house was a

lawn, perhaps fifty yards in extent between the house and public

road, or, as it was called, the "pike." 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. At the time there was

not even a domestic animal in the field. In another field, beyond the

pasture, a dozen slaves were at work under an overseer. (162)

The most remarkable characteristic of this passage is its undeniably

objective nature. 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, "This testimony, as

might have been expected, was corroborated 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). There is never an

explanation, logical or otherwise, for Williamson's disappearance, and the

limited narrator tells us later, "what has been here related is all that is

certainly known of the matter" (164). By refusing to provide an explanation

for Williamson's disappearance, by stressing only what is known, Bierce

effectively comments 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. Then we follow the

testimonies concerning the disappearance, which, of course, should follow the

disappearance. Time is an issue because we perceive of existence in time as

akin to existence within space. Thus, we wonder where Williamson went when

he disappeared; 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 more appropriately. Boman explains

that for the Hebrews "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 perceiving events in terms of stream-of-consciousness is represented

here by Williamson's disappearance, for his disappearance reflects the idea

that past, present, and future are simultaneously bound together in rhythmic

alternation and in an indivisible whole. What the written text reveals initially

is Williamson's present; what it reveals subsequently is his past or future,

when he exists in that other essence. Just like the written text, as far as the

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

Surroundings," Bierce puts forth his treatise that context defines the nature of

a text. 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

an important role in defining his written material. This supernatural

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

Hebraic intertextuality. Readers are first struck by the formal legalese of the

third person narrator and are provided with a detailed examination of the

environment in which Williamson's disappearance occurs, even to the extent

that they know the distance between the house and the pike, fifty yards. But

mn - -- R. '401 WOMAVAMMOWAVOMPOW

95

the disturbing inexplicable nature of the events is distinct from that familiar

and well-marked environment. Herein lies the juxtaposition 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 common-

place scene using techniques of realism, accurate description, and objectivity,

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

requires reconciliation between the event and the environment in which it

occurs. But this is not possible. The surroundings are too familiar and too

comfortable; a supernatural event should occur within a supernatural context.

Indeed, it does. The world is never mundane and commonplace. Inexplicable,

uncertain, and always a mystery, the world is as supernatural as Williamson's

disappearance. 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 hierarchy to formulate logic and answer

questions concerning their world. 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] eyes"

and rendered her mad and incompetent to testify (163). 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

not . . . anywhere." He does not presume that Williamson no longer exists.

Bierce recognizes only that Williamson no longer exists as he has been known

to exist previously. But, "The courts decided that Williamson was dead, and his

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, outside the

traditional idea that what we see is what we get. Just as testimonies

concerning Williamson's disappearance support the theory that we do not

always get what we see, so does "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field." Even with a

written text before them, readers do not read a story complete with

introduction, conflict, climax, resolution, and denouement. However, when

the story is evaluated within the context of intertextuality, the story's

absurdity recedes. 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, what might

bes, for the only boundaries of reality are our perceptions. Thus, in "The

Difficulty of Crossing a Field" there are no opposing poles to move between,

97

and readers are required to move into the text to formulate a progressive

interpretation. But the story is unlike the first three stories interpreted in

this chapter, which actually present readers with various interpretations of

the world within their written texts, or even the fourth story, which actually

explains the interpretation of the world necessary to place the story within

context. 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 of that distortion. The

planter Williamson did live as you and I. But he no longer lives as you and I.

However, he did not die. 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 suggest simultaneous ontologies. This

indubitably requires readers 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 exposing connective relations. Readers themselves must

characterize the inner specific reality of the thing they read, and they can do

so if they operate intertextually and perceive a multitude of meanings and

references, relevant to all time and place within every statement, word or

letter of the text. Merrell remarks that "the mind 'invents' hitherto unknown

realities and thus 'transforms the world,' in the sense that it constantly

penetrates the physical world to reorganize and reinterpret it" (1). In "The

Difficulty of Crossing a Field" we see again grasped reality instead of

98

representation; readers' minds must recognize previously unknown realities

to transform the world and reinterpret 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. The

non-linear perception of time, the use of metonymy, and the varied

interpretations of a text due to the creative power of the word combine to

create mystical tales readers cannot resolve. Even the Rabbinic method of

interpretation, while it provides 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). Bierce was not

interested in realistic literature. "For Bierce the universe was not made

sensible by the certainties of much late-nineteenth-century science"

(Davidson 122). Instead of probabilities, he was interested in possibilities

(Wiggins 44). 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. In Bierce's nightmares we dream in tandem with the

dreamer. (41-42)

99

100

Ambrose Bierce's preoccupation with tenuous possibilities at the

expense of stable certainties resulted in his producing material which

requires critical readers to develop alternative methods of interpretation.

Gambaccini explains that "[Bierce's] tales, unlike Poe's, 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 writers of the

nineteenth century (42). Bierce's readers cannot cling to assumptions and

preconceived ideas concerning the nature of the world and expect to resolve

the conflicts presented in his tales. Gambaccini says, "[Bierce's] stories can be

disconcerting. Time is out of sync, the reader's expectations for the plot aren't

fulfilled, and almost nothing is foreshadowed. It is difficult to distinguish

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 writings of

Bernard Malamud and the Latin American writers Julio 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" (42). Bierce and such postmodern writers explore the nature

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 the writer's

both/and, an open-ended refusal to dichotomize" (121). In doing so,

postmodern writers undermine the foundation upon 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 for late-nineteenth-century

realism, is turned inside out" (Davidson 122). 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 . . . . [Thus, in

postmodern literature] the reader necessarily 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, many of Bierce's stories run no more

than two or three thousand words. 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. The stories' multiplicity of

levels is attested to by two paradoxically accurate critical remarks concerning

Bierce's style and form. 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 and react

to a piece of literature the way we do. New Critics have called for strict

102

adherence to the idea that the text contains its own meaning and exists apart

from any interpretation a reader might assign to it. Post-structuralists have

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. Structuralists have advocated that the sign is independent of the

referent and maintains a value only in its relationship 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 concerning

the meaning of a given piece of literature. Hebraic intertextuality's process of

continuing interpretation, however, satisfactorally deals with a multitude of

interpretations, even contradictory interpretations, by accepting all

interpretations as inherent within the text itself.

The Hebrews' submission to the unknowable, the incomprehensible, is

much like that of Bierce's and postmodern authors' submission to the

unknowable. Handelman explains that the Rabbis allow interpretive tradition

to acquire religious authority and that they ultimately proclaim 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. What is extraordinary here is their

expansion of the concept of the written Torah (revelation) to embrace their

very attempts to understand it" (Handelman 202). Scholem states:

103

The unfolding of the truths, statements and circumstances that

are given in or accompany revelations becomes 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, but rather as a

phenomenon of eternal fruitfulness to be unearthed and

examined: "Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it" . . . .

Out of the religious tradition, they bring forth something

entirely new, something that commands religious dignity:

commentary. Revelation needs commentary in order to be

rightly understood and applied-and this is the far from self-

evident religious doctrine out of which grew both the

phenomenon of biblical exegesis and the Jewish tradition which

it created. (287)

Handelman explains that commentary is thus significant for the

Hebrews "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 of that text is to generate further interpretable

material. Thus, the interpretation process 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, provides "infinite interpretation" (Handelman 205). Scholem

states: " . . . 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). If, as Handelman points out, we were to

replace the term "God's word" in Scholem's lengthy foregoing statement with

"its contemporary secular equivalent, text, this description of a 'meaningless'

origin producing endless other text interpretations could have been written

by Derrida or Barthes" (205). 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" (295).

Only the interpretations of tradition afford meaning to the name. Scholem

continues: "If the conception of revelation 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 fiction" (134). She finds in Bierce's

stories the disorientation and ambiguity of modem life reflected in

105

contemporary literature. She states that postmodern "writers produce

calculated incomplete narrations that tempt the reader to finish the fiction.

The reader is thereby invited to be an accomplice in perpetrating the text . . .

(128). The irresolvability of "The Death of Halpin Frayser" and the blurring of

characters' and readers' cognitions in "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" are

examples of incomplete narrations requiring a reader's contribution.

Postmodern writers create a fusion of fiction and life and refuse to distinguish

between what has traditionally been identified as fantasy and reality,

falsehood and truth. Such writers have not simply sought to express the

complexities and disillusionment of modem life by blurring fantasy and

reality but instead have chosen to utilize form and presentation to

communicate the ambiguities and uncertainties as well. Davidson writes that

"Bierce, like many twentieth-century experimental 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 of narration, the limitations of

perception and cogitation" (133-134). For example, consider Bernard

Malamud's The Tenants. 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." We find postmodernism in the free indirect discourse of The

Tenants and "Axolotls" and the stream-of-consciousness in Borges' "The Secret

106

Miracle," which abuses readers' perceptual and cognitive limitations and

refuses to yield a declarative statement. This same technique is used

extensively in "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," "The Death of Halpin

Frayser," and "The Man and the Snake." "A Psychological Shipwreck" reveals

Bierce's ability to demand that the reader "be an accomplice in perpetrating

the text . . . " (Davidson 128). This short tale takes advantage of readers'

preconceptions 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 grasps this understanding; thus the reader and the character

experience, in a sense, the activity simultaneously.

"The Death of Halpin Frayser" exhibits all these elements which

Davidson identifies as the tools of postmodern writers used to reflect the

disorientation, the fragmentation, and the alienation of today's readers in

modem society. Written in four sections, the story itself is physically

fragmented 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: Is the

protagonist incestuous, murderous, or a victimized poet? As Davidson explains,

"The joke lies in the fact that the reader must continually reject these

107

apparent solutions because they do not adequately comprehend the

complexities elsewhere in the text. 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). When she points out the "futility of looking for a

moral justification for Halpin's fate" (106), she echoes contemporary

postmodern writers: There is no resolution, no justification, no understanding

of the world in which we find ourselves.

The Hebraic theory of intertexuality, unlike the traditional Western

theory of language, recognizes man's cognitive limitations and assigns to

words a vivifying power. As such, it is an effective and rewarding method of

interpretation for an increasing amount of postmodern literature displaying

characteristics like those found in Bierce's tales. Such a methodology allows

texts to interpenetrate the world of the reader's experience and yields a

greater number of meanings and references. Like Fish's theory of reader

response and Herrnstein Smith's theory based on multiple interacting

variables, Hebraic intertexuality draws the reader into the text and

incorporates the reader as a character. But unlike these other theories,

Hebraic intertextuality allows the reader's 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. To embrace Hebraic

intertextuality is to embrace Bierce, for suddenly the disturbing elements of

his stories, their indeterminacy, their "weird, shadowy effect" (Starrett 37),

become the stories' virtues and the reader's source of satisfaction.

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