Joint Functioning of Two Parallel Trajectories of Signification: Ambrose Bierce's "A Horseman in the Sky"

Abstract

In interpreting literary narrative, we usually go along one trajectory of signification and explore what thematic message is conveyed by verbal choices in text. But in some literary narratives, there exist two parallel trajectories of signification. They are, on one hand, independent, each functioning on its own, and on other need each other in meaning making of text. Although working together in generating thematic message, they do go in conflicting thematic directions. Paying attention only to one trajectory will lead to suppression of thematic meaning linguistic choices simultaneously generate in other trajectory, resulting in one-sided picture. If we uncover how two parallel trajectories contradict, condition, and complement each other, we will not only get fuller and more balanced picture of thematic significance of text, but also come to see tension and semantic density of this kind of literary texts from new angle. Moreover, we are invited to see meaning not as meaning generated in text but as meaning generated in given trajectory of signification in text. In what follows, I will first reveal, step by step, dual trajectory of signification in Ambrose Bierce's Horseman in Sky (1891), prefacing analysis with brief summary of existing criticisms. Then I will compare this text with Bierce's Affair at Coulter's Notch (1891), which only has single trajectory of signification but which has been put on par with other text. Based on analysis, I will explain how dual trajectory of signification differs from various kinds of complicated meaning as previously investigated. In addition, I will suggest how to uncover dual trajectory. PREVIOUS CRITICISMS OF HORSEMAN IN THE SKY Bierce's Horseman in Sky is one of most famous American Civil War stories. It has tragic plot: A young Virginian named Carter Druse joins Union army, and while on sentry duty, he discovers Confederate horseman spy at edge of cliff. The spy turns out to be no other than his own father, who he has to kill for protection of five regiments of his comrades. Remembering his father's words that he should always do his duty, he fires at horse, resulting in falling of father on horseback from top of cliff. Focusing on victim, Allan Smith thinks that story might indeed reasonably be subtitled 'The Dead Father' (72). Other critics pay more attention to son as central character, who is one of protagonists of Bierce's stories trapped in an explicable nightmare world of sudden and often random destruction, trap in this case constituted by misplaced patriotism (Morris 122-23). The story expresses deep psychological trauma, and central character becomes automatized, part of military machine (Solomon 150-51). This is tale in which the tragedy of Civil War in splitting up families into enemy factions is unforgettably etched (Joshi 46), and in which we read of nothing but minutest details of bodily and mental pain (Novels of Week). H. E. Bates asserts that the famous A Horseman in Sky' alone would put him [Bierce] into front rank of all commentators on futility of war (50). Bierce himself joined Union army in April 1861. Although he fought heroically for United States, internecine was very traumatic for him. As result, he became an antiwar writer, famous for his bitter irony against horrifying, cruel, irrational, and inhuman nature of war. Horseman in Sky is representative work among Bierce's stories that convey with bitter irony a fatalistic, defeatist vision of battle in which noble and simple-minded alike are consumed, or consume themselves (Hunter 286). No nineteenth-century American writers sustained an ironic approach to so consistently as Bierce did (Solomon 155). …