I found that the stories are frightening because they are more into psychological horror. Bierce’s stories make us think of the supernatural and things that cannot be rationalised and things that we cannot see or understand. The horror and suspense and things that are not tangible he creates in an incredible way through his use of characters and the establishing atmosphere.
The language used by Bierce is very effective and highly descriptive as he uses a different for of English language giving every last detail. This is because he wrote this in the nineteen hundreds and the English he writes seems like a whole different language to us.
‘Staley Fleming’s Hallucination,’ is a very effective piece of writing as Bierce tends to create a sense of horror and suspense and keeps it going to the very end of the story. What I like about this short story is the way Staley Fleming thinks he is ‘loony’ from the very start but the physician tends to think that it is guilt coming back on him as he assumes Staley Fleming murdered Atwell Barton, a great enemy of Staley’s, and that this dog that appears to him is the loyal dog of Atwell Barton’s. At the end of the story it states that ‘when the man was dead an examination disclosed the unmistakable marks of animal’s fangs.’ I found this very interesting and very frightening as there was no animal in the room and the physician said, ‘I should have thought this, believing it suicide.’ It makes you wonder, did Staley Fleming commit suicide or did the ghost of Atwell Barton’s dog come back to seek revenge. Bierce has put a lot of thought into this story as he wants us to think about the unknown and the supernatural to create a horrifying moment for the reader.
‘John Bartines watch,’ is a story told in the second person. I find this to be better than a story told in the first person because we are able to get every detail and features of the settings and the main characters. For example, in the passage when the physician tricked John Bartine into opening his watch at ‘two minutes to eleven.’ We get every detail of his facial expressions and movements as it says, ‘his eyes, their blackness strikingly intensified by the pallor of his face, were fixed upon the watch, which he clutched in both hands.’ This description gives us a chance to feel the horror and to get a sense of how horrified John Bartine was as he opened the watch.
This story makes us think about the things we inherit from our ancestors. When I say this I don’t always mean materials. We can inherit all sorts of things like looks, attitude, illness or even personalities as they are passed through generations. In this case John Bartine has not only inherited his great grandfathers , Bramwell Olcott Bartine, watch but he has also inherited his looks and features as there was a picture of him on the inside of the watch and was described to be near identical to John Bartine.
When John Bartine dies in the end of the story we are left wondering how he died. It says that ‘every organ was normal and sound,’ but yet he died in such an extreme way. ‘He looked at me and made an attempt to smile, but his lower lip quivered and he seemed to close his mouth. His hands, also, were shaking, and he thrust them, clenched, into the pockets of his sack coat. He began to sway from side to side, as from vertigo.’ Did the watch of John Bartine cause his own death?
Bierce leaves this story open at the end, as he does with many others of his stories. I think this is for us to question the story and for us to come up with our own conclusions, as to what really happened.
‘A Jug of Syrup,’ I found is the most striking story that I studied because when I read it I didn’t want to put it down until I got to the very end. The horror and suspense were striking but it made the story more interesting and was endurable.
The story tells us that Alvan Creede put a jug of syrup down and when he turned away and turned back again to get it, it was gone. Sometimes we have occurrences like these when we put something down and go to get it again and find it has been removed. The obvious thing to ask yourself is, is that where I definitely put it, or someone must have lifted it after you. In this case Alvan Creede puts it down to insanity as he says to his wife, ‘Jane, I have gone mad------ that is it! You should have told me.’
Mr Creede can remember Silas Deemer giving him the jug of syrup. He doesn’t understand how this could have happened as he died just two weeks before. Also, at the end of the story the strange behaviour happens again when everyone can see Silas Deemer in his shop window, welcoming people in. This makes us wonder, can anything like that really happen? Or does Bierce want us to question our knowledge and beliefs about the supernatural.
Bierce sends out mixed feeling throughout this story. At the beginning of the story we are left in suspense of not knowing what happened with the jug and was it removed by someone or something. This is what scared me most because nowadays we are scared by scary films and people getting murdered but Bierce is trying to scare us psychologically, and it really works.
‘One Summer Night’ was one of the shortest stories we studied by Bierce. What I like about this story is the way that Henry Armstrong was buried alive and he woke up and realised this and very calmly went back to sleep again to die peacefully. If I woke up in that situation I think I would panic, but Bierce stresses the fact that Henry Armstrong was calm. ‘So with no particular apprehension for his immediate future, he fell asleep and all was peace with Henry Armstrong.’
Bierce uses black humour in this story because once Henry Armstrong had realised he was buried alive and went back to sleep again he was dug up by medical students and was murdered. ‘Stretched naked on a long table lay the body of Henry Armstrong, the head defile with blood and clay from a blow with a spade.’ This is something we are not supposed to laugh at but some find it hilarious the way it happened. When I was researching about Bierce I read ‘The Devil’s Dictionary’ and it stated that Bierce’s definition of happiness is ‘an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of others.’ This ties in with us laughing at the misery of Henry Armstrong.
Others find it horrifying as they would be terrified of being buried alive and in those days it was quite common for medical students to dig up the corpses. This also ties in with Bierce’s definition of a grave, which I also found in ‘The Devil’s Dictionary.’ A grave is a place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.’
Reading these stories of Bierce’s I found to be very interesting and thoroughly enjoyed. I think it is clear that Bierce was trying to scare a lot of people and effectively did as the description, the language used, the mixed feelings it sends out and the context of his writing creates a lot of horror and suspense.
Some may say that Bierce is sick others say that he is very intelligent. Bierce- brilliant or disturbed?