An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
An iconic example of Bierce’s patented ability to confound readers with an unexpected “twist” ending and unquestionably the author’s most well-known work. The reader follows with breathless anticipation the adventures of a Southerner who miraculously escapes death by hanging during the Civil War. Peyton Farquhar is the beneficiary of cheap rope and a makeshift gallows when the noose snaps at the moment of judgement and he is given the unexpected opportunity to flee for freedom. Or is he?
A soldier who has fallen asleep wakes to see a Confederate soldier and his horse perched on a high cliff across the way. He considers shooting the man, but is morally conflicted by the circumstances of this action. Finally, he decides to just shoot the man’s horse and watches as both man and animal leap from the ledge. The soldier’s superior officer is returning to camp when he see the sight of horse and man falling through the sky and when he reaches the soldier he learns that that he shot the horse and not the man. His explanation for this decision? The man was not just a Confederate soldier, but also his own father.
Chickamauga
Another of Bierce’s most famous stories and another example of a knife being twisted into the expectations of the reader at the end. This story features a child who is both incapable of speech and deaf making his way across a Civil War battlefield littered in shells, dead bodies and dried blood. Finally, he reaches his destination. He has made this horrifying odyssey to get back home, but when he gets there, it is has been burned to the ground and his bullet-ridden mother joins the list of casualties.
A Son of the Gods
A tale of heroism and vengeance as a scout risks his own life in an effort to divulge the location of the enemy to his unit of soldiers. Just when it seems he may succeed and survive, he is shot down. From the cover in which they had themselves been hiding, his fellow soldiers rush toward the enemy overcome with intense emotions at what they just witnessed. The story ends on the bitterly ironic twist that exactly what the scout was trying to avoid happening is exactly what does happen: the soldiers are mowed down in a bloodbath.
The Affair at Coulter's Notch
Union officer Capt. Coulter is from the South and given orders by a particularly malevolent general to shell a house. Coulter is aware he cannot refuse the order, but he is also aware that his wife and child are inside the house which just so happens to be his home. Another moral quandary that becomes a commentary on the moral morass of any civil war.
One of the Missing
An orderly in the Union Army named Jerome has been sent on a scouting mission to look for any surprises that may be lying in wait. When he finds Confederate soldiers retreating from a plantation, he draw his aim on his target. Just then, a cannon is launched toward the spot where Jerome is keeping cover. Upon regaining consciousness after the blast, Jerome finds himself under a ton of debris and unable to move. As if that weren’t bad enough, he also sees that his still-cocked rifle is staring straight at him and could go off with the slightest movement. Eventually, he decides to just face the inevitable and push against the trigger. It turns out the gun had already gone off when the building collapsed on top of him. The fear alone dooms Jerome and his body is not even collected by his unit since the cannon explosion has turned his blue uniform Confederate gray.
A Tough Tussle
Union soldier Lt. Byring spend a night on patrol in the company of the corpse of a Confederate soldier ruminating about the philosophical nature of man and of war. The body repulses Byring enough to make a move toward leaving his post, but he realizes he cannot do and changes his mind. Eventually, he believes that the dead body is starting to move of its own accord, but just then the fighting on the battlefield commences. The next morning a union soldier discovers two dead bodies: Byring and a Confederate. The evidence is quite clear that Byring was did his duty and brought down the rebel, but Byring himself died from a sword to the heart. The strange thing is that the sword belonged to Byring and the Confederate man perished before Byring.
Killed at Resaca
The mystery of why Herman Brayle, soldier beloved by all, insists upon putting himself at unnecessary risk by doing things like rising tall in the saddle during the thick of battle or standing up to make himself a larger target during gunfights. Eventually, his actions do result in his being killed and when his body is recovered, his fellow soldiers who respected him so discover a letter from the woman he loved in which she writes about having heard tales of him cowardly running away from battle and that she could never possibly marry such a man. When the narrator of the story arrives to inform the woman that Herman was not a coward in death, but was in fact quite heroic, he is taken aback by the woman’s stunning beauty. He winds up telling her that Herman was killed at Resaca not in battle but as the result of a snakebite.
The Coup de Grace
Capt. Madwell oversees the process of identifying the dead after a grueling battle when he takes a break to regain his composure in the woods. While there he hears a moan and discovers more soldiers who appear to be ready to join the list of the dead. One of them, however, is obviously alive and he is shocked to see that it is an old childhood friend whose brother also happens to be Madwell’s nemesis. There is no possibility that his friend will survive and so rather than have him suffer, Madwell takes his sword and puts him out of his misery. Just at that moment, however, three men arrive to witness what looked like simple murder. One of the three is the dead man’s brother.
The Mocking-Bird
Private Grayrock is the lookout. The night is dark and he gets confused as to which side of the tree was leaning against. One side looks toward the union army and the other side toward the Confederate. Now he doesn’t know whether he is looking for the blues or the grays, his friends or his enemies. Nevertheless, he blindly shoots out in the dark, setting off a battle in the distance. As the battle wages, he sets off in search of whomever he shot in the dark. The body seems to have disappeared and the longer he searches, the more he is reminded of the days he and his twin brother used to play in the woods and this makes him recall how they became one of those families ripped apart by differing allegiances. Eventually he finds the body of the stranger he shot in the dark, but he’s not stranger. It was his brother.
