why did druse ultimately decide to shoot at the horseman?
Davidson's reading model is obviously that of the contemporary post-structuralist moment, and she does not do much to show its applicability to the social and historical context in which Bierce operated. If I were him I wouldnt shoot his father, but he also said “do what to concive to be your duty”. Source: Bradley Skeen, Critical Essay on "A Horseman in the Sky," in Short Stories for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2009. He pulled his gun aimed it right at guys head and right before he shot he had realized that it was his dad sitting on top of the horse.After awhile he pulled his gun up and aimed it at the horse.He shot.The horse and guy went fallin to there death. As "open-ended and incomplete" texts, the best of Bierce's stories construct war episodes as "inescapably indeterminate" events: "The various perspectives, including the narrator's, give us different possible ways of looking at men at war—and, also, at peace—but no way of validating any particular vision." On the contrary, he does so because he is a supremely loyal soldier. These "things" turned out to be the corpses of Union scouts slain by "Allegheny Ed" Johnson's Confederate troops in earlier skirmish. Bierce, Ambrose, The Devil's Dictionary, in The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Gordian, 1966, p. 49. Carter Druse the main character in the story has to shoot his father because of his duty. In war character becomes automatized, part of the military machine. To alot of people, the action that Carter chose to take was Here, similarly, a natural event, the wounded horse and its rider falling from the cliff, is perceived by its viewer as a miracle and a sign of the biblical revelation of the end times. The terrible irony we realize at the end of the story is that the rider upon the horse was Carter’s dad. Repeatedly, his protagonists become enmeshed in some fatal trap or are destroyed by uncontrollable fears. His father, rather than ascending to resurrection, descends into death. He looks at the frog and decides to prove the frog wrong. Bunnell said that when the band shot the cover for its third album “Hat Trick,” which was released in 1973, the photo shoot did include horses and band members did go out into the desert for a couple days to get some shots. But Carter Druse is forced by the circumstances of the war to lie in concealment and kill without warning any enemy he sees, thus honorably fulfilling his duty as a soldier. 1890s: In a series of essays on the growing arms industry, Bierce makes the point that the Civil War demonstrated the brutal industrial nature of modern warfare. New historicist critics, who are interested in the historical context of literature as opposed to philosophical issues such as those raised by magic realism, show considerable interest in Bierce's Civil War stories. Thats why its called “Horseman in the Sky. "A Horseman in the Sky He catches war at its sources, and he makes it an intensification of personal experience…. ", The regimental mind-set was scarcely improved by the sight that greeted them along their retreat. Every artist and every wealthy young man making the grand tour of Europe would have seen this world-famous statue prominently displayed in Rome; the lithographic printing that was then becoming cheap and popular ensured that practically every literate person would have been familiar with it. If he would not have shot the horse and made him go over the cliff his father would have rode back to the Confederate side, told them that the Union soldiers were going to attack, and there would’ve been an ambush. the federal base was. to do, and it was the right thing. . It is situational irony becuase Carter shoots the horse and the horse jumps off the cliff to his death. He disappeared without a trace sometime early in 1914. His ancestors had been Puritans from Scotland who joined the colony of Connecticut. It is ironic because at the end, of the story when Carter Druse shoots the horse that his dad is on top, his dad and the horse go falling off the mountain. He did a right and noble thing. The commander's objective distance from the events of the story—he receives his information only from the narrative of the officer—identify his viewpoint with that of the reader living twenty years (or more) after the events imagined in the story. Certainly the coincidences are over-emphasized for added ironic effect in these war stories as in all of Bierce's work. A true horseman knows the animal from the inside out and always has a watchful eye noticing even the smallest detail. After the abrupt and ambiguous ending to the preceding section, the point of view of the narrative switches to that of a Federal officer who is scouting on the valley floor along the base of the cliff. If he let his father see them, he will get the confederate army and they will kill his solders. I believe he did the right thing by shooting the horse and killing his father. Sitiuational irony is what you think is going to happen from what really happens. Since war is full of startling chances, the author's controlling hand is less obtrusive than it might be. One example, in Rome, was spared because it was believed to represent Constantine, the first Roman emperor to become a Christian. I would not be able to kill my own father because, he is my father, I mean it’s like when someone dies that you know you fell bad, but when you killed that person you twice as bad, you feel like crud, and the night mears would be horrible. I might have been able to do it but might not have. On the one hand, the Civil War commemorated by the statues, memorials, and the new holiday of Decoration Day was a glorious testimony to national honor, but on the other, the war that veterans like Bierce remembered in the secret places of their hearts was terrible and destructive. Follow edited Jan 22 '17 at 12:37. The terrible irony of the story, A Horseman in the sky is situational irony. The second section of the story justifies its mixed presentation of symbolic and realistic material from Druse's waking, rather than wakeful, state. How repulsive they looked with their blood-smears, their blank, staring eyes, their teeth uncovered by contraction of the lips!" Its essential feature is the slaughter of the young, the brave, the ambitious, the hopeful." Bierce's regiment, at Elkwater, was too far away to take part in the mishandled Confederate attack on Cheat Mountain on September 12, but on October 3, it participated in a reconnaissance in force against rebel breastworks near the Greenbrier River. Not surprisingly, critics have generally described Bierce's work, and especially his Civil War short stories, as the best anti-heroic war fiction to appear before Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. Carter does what his dad says and shoots the horse. When the people were coming up the mountain he saw a person on a horse. His father was with Confederates, but his son was on the Union side of the war. Since these older magical worldviews are based on human feeling, they can still have as much meaning to people as the scientific worldview that has disproven many of the reputed properties of such magic as physical facts. He does not heighten his fiction with the details of war in the manner of John W. De Forest or John Esten Cooke; rather he steeps his stories in the aura, the meaning of battle. In a change from the heretofore realistic tone of the story, Druse is awakened from his sleep by an angel or demon; the narrative leaves this point purposefully obscure: "What good or bad angel came …, who shall say?" It is also fitting that such an attack on the idea of honor and loyalty to a higher cause should be developed in a text where, in order to follow strictly the orders he has received, a captain ends up firing on his own men only to be eventually sentenced to death because the general who gave the order in the first place is killed in battle and no one can defend him. 5-31, 64. At any rate, the rhetorical and structural peculiarities she discerns in Bierce's tales are also common to texts (like those of the yellow press) which one would not normally call open-ended. Yet this example shows how Bierce uses a highly unusual military situation that focuses the whole history of his characters onto one remarkable event. However, Druse's father looms largest in the story as an equestrian statue, a genre of art that is traced back to a single Roman equestrian statue of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. He probably didn’t want to aim at his father because he didnt have the courage. His father said “Go, Carter ,and, whatever may occur, do what you conceive to be your duty.” Carter did what his father said. It can hardly be a coincidence that Bierce's own father was named Marcus Aurelius. The Irony of the story “The horseman in the Sky” is that there is a horseman up on the cliff, and it is his father. Compose your paragraphs in Notepad first and save the document as horseman. … Despite McClellan's earlier boast that "our success is complete & secession is killed in this country," Bierce and his regiment were soon back in Virginia, making sure that secession—or, at any rate, its stubbornly unburied ghost—remained dead. Armisted is a better man because he truly believes in the chivalric code of honor which for the Governor is a mere smoke screen. When they were at home Carter ruse’s dad said, “Whatever may occur, do what you conceive to be your duty”. Gen. Joseph J. Reynolds, the new brigade commander, had determined to probe the enemy defenses at Buffalo Mountain, a move that Bierce, as a rapidly seasoned veteran, justifiably considered one that was being made "more to keep up the appearance of doing something than with a hope of accomplishing a military result." He did the right thing because he obayed his dad but he also killed his dad. He then sets out to search for them, but his impression of their flight is so strong that he searches a good distance away from the cliff, whereas in fact they would have fallen straight down to the foot of the cliff. The narrative pauses for a moment to foreshadow later developments in the story by asserting that if Druse had fired at that instant, everything would have turned out well for him (probably indicating that he had not yet recognized the horseman). As his friend David Jordan wrote: "Whether glory or conquest or commercial greed be war's purpose the ultimate result of war is death. But then, "In his memory, as if they were a divine mandate, rang the words of his father at their parting: ‘Whatever may occur, do what you conceive to be your duty.’" The recollection of these words allows Druse to impose order on his reluctant body, speaking to it as though his will were a separate force, "Peace, be still." Scientific progress and discovery had managed to prolong man's life, but in so doing, had intensified the struggle for existence through overpopulation and increased competition. He rose through the ranks to become a sergeant, then a lieutenant, and finally, as a topographical engineer, he became a member of the staff of General W. B. Hazen. Skeen is a classics professor. A thing that is neither enjoyed while had, nor missed when lost. In it, the civilian guide who led Bierce's column up to the rebel camp at Buffalo Mountain is personified by a young, well-born Virginian who has impulsively joined the Union army at Grafton. I would not be able to do such a thing. I take an ear in hand, fold it over, and run my fingers across her muzzle. Like Poe, Bierce is highly selective, fixing upon the decisive, revealing moment. Many narratives, including those of the earliest Western literary texts, the Iliad and the Odyssey, begin at some dramatic moment of action that captures the reader's attention, even though the event is in the middle of the story (in medias res). In the following excerpt, Solomon identifies the source of Bierce's "bitter irony": the failure of reason, particularly amidst the madness of war. Its forefeet were upon a human body, its head was depressed and invisible. Carter,and, whatever may occur, do what you conceive to be The irony in the story is situational irony.Because he has to decide if he is going to kill the man on the horse or not.He has to think is he going to let one man live and have an whole army die because of one man.He does once put his gun down and has to make a decision fast.which is the hardest desion he will prbably have to make in his life. Everywhere death, terror, lamentation and the laughter that is more terrible than tears—the fury and despair of a race hanging on to life by the tips of its fingers! The Irony that was descussed was terrible. The irony is situational and it puts you in that At the end of “Horsemen in the sky”we discover a terrible thing that Carter Druse has to do. Scenery irony means that you think that one thing is going to happen in a story but then it goes in a entertiry different way. I know what Carter did was the right thing to do, but if I was in his place I don’t think I could have shot at my father. The readers didn’t expect that in the end To some, it represents support for "traditional" American values; to others, national solidarity in the face of foreign aggression; to yet others, state-enforced political conformity. In a piece he published some years after his Civil War tales, Bierce wrote: That is all the nonsense about "the horrors of war," in so far as the detestable phrase implies that they are worse than those of peace; they are more striking and impressive, that is all…. The Governor is one of those "distinguished civilians" who like to catch a glimpse "of the horrors of war" as long as this can be done "safely." Ambrose was of a different temperament, however, and felt estranged and neglected by the patriarchal rule of his father, Marcus Aurelius Bierce, over the family. You expect they’re to be a spirit or angle flying in the sky but it was actually his dad and a horse falling off a cliff to their deaths. The subsequent skirmish there "has not got into history," wrote Bierce, "but it had a real objective existence. Its not what you expected to happened in the story. As veterans of the summer campaign, Bierce noticed that "we were regarded by the others with profound respect as ‘old soldiers.’ (Our ages, if equalized, would, I fancy, have given about twenty years to each man.) 1860s: Many Americans feel a greater sense of loyalty to their states than to the nation as a whole. Remembering his father’s admonition to always to do his duty, he decides to shoot, but he aims and fires at the horse. The Governor of the State, he grants a military commission to an Armisted, who wishes to enlist and die in battle since his wife has betrayed him. Real soldiers, who can discern "expectancy and readiness" where the civilian can see only "carelessness, confusion, indifference," are better men, men with a first-hand knowledge of the ugly face of the world, and men who can distinguish between substance and appearance, between what is essential and what is "ornamental." If I was Carter I don’t think I could have done it because it was my dad and I betrayed the Federal. She has light skin and midnight blue hair. In Bierce's "Tales of Civilians" which make up the second half of In the Midst of Life, his stories seem labored and contrived. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. [Besides a] quarter-century of peace will make a nation of blockheads and scoundrels. Fate, as anyone knows, cannot be influenced by humans. His father replies with”Go At the same time, they never point to any reality beyond that of the text itself. 1890s: Though duels cease to be part of political culture, they continue to be common as part of a romantic reaction to modernity; one of Bierce's sons is killed in a duel in the early 1890s. As Duncan and Klooster explain in their introduction to Bierce's Civil War writings, Bierce could not agree with this attitude. DIED: 1916, Beaumont-Hamel, France