Comments by
Colin Smith
I think it’s funny that the bugle call used is the reveille, which is supposed to signal troops to wake up in the morning. Probably the filmmaker didn’t know that the call wouldn’t make sense at a hanging, or maybe he didn’t think the audience would be able to tell the difference, and he simply liked the reveille.
It seems that the viewer would already know the nature of the hanging by the sign displayed before the beginning credits. The bugle call may be there to reinforce the fact that the hanging is military, but the viewer should realize that it is military very soon after the call by seeing the uniforms.
Who is the single man who looks like he’s standing atop a rock? It looks like it could be the lieutenant or one of the sentries. Why did the director show him?
I think that the purpose of using Farquhar’s face is mainly to give the viewer a sense of direction. Without showing Farquhar switch his gaze across the screen, for example, the viewer would be disoriented from seeing one end of the railroad, then the other end immediately afterward. There has to be some sort of transition signifying that the camera turned 180 degrees, or the sequence becomes dizzying.
The description of the symptoms of being hanged reminds me of the drum motif from the film that I referred to in class today. It may hint to the astute reader that Farquhar is being hanged in his real life, the way that real happenings can leak into our dreams (like a telephone ringing near a sleeping person can make him answer it in his dream, for example). However, the foreshadowing is easily disguised by the fact that Farquhar was delirious. Likewise, the drumming at the end of the film can be disguised by the fact that, by 1962, music was a common way to build up suspense in films.
Very astute, Christina. I don’t know if I buy the idea, but I like it a lot. Maybe we could follow the metaphor to the fact that the walls terminate at a point, which would make them seem to go on for infinity. That also could be a comment on war. Still, I’m not sure if the author meant it (he was, after all, trying to portray a dream state), but it’s interesting.
Oops, I meant to post that to the next paragraph.
This is unrelated to the story, but I think it’s interesting to point out that logging is common these days in North America because the most recent war in which a significant amount of shrapnel was produced was the Civil War. In Europe, for example, logging is uncommon and very difficult because of the danger that shrapnel in trees from WWII and WWI poses to high-speed saws.
An aeolian harp is a kind of instrument like windchimes, but the wind blows strings at certain harmonics, depending on the wind speed. It sounds like this: http://www.cooginstruments.com/Sounds/AeolianSoundClip.mp3
A second thought: obviously the water provided enough surface tension to bounce a cannonball out of the river! Surely the force required to deflect a cannonball is enough to misshape a volley of bullets.
It doesn’t seem to be an actual turning point for the entire passage, just a reaction to a real threat. In fact, it seems Farquhar was spared by the lieutenant’s impractical order. After Fuquhar is finished worrying about the fire-at-will and the grapeshot, he practically has a straight shot home, and he does indeed make it home to his wife.
Definitely. Soldiers used to mold bullets out of lead over campfires, so it’s not exactly a stretch to imagine a bullet becoming very hot from air resistance. Additionally, water has a high surface tension, so it can provide a lot of force back into a material that hits it at high speed. There’s no way a spear or arrow tip could become uncomfortably warm or lodge itself between a person’s collar and neck without lacerating the neck.
I really like the use of the word “ramification” to describe the pain Farquhar felt radiating from his neck. Like the word “radiate” (which means to grow like the root of a plant), “ramification” means spreading out like the branches of a tree. It evokes an image of flames branching from a source, or the pain pulsing through ramification of Fuquhar’s arteries and veins. It’s extremely visual.
The bridge was under control of the Union army, who had probably recently advanced to that position. Since the bridge was necessary for transport of troops, supplies, etc, a commandant of the Union has condemned anybody to be caught tampering with it. Naturally, Farquhar wanted to hurt the Union by burning the bridge, thereby impeding the Union’s progress.
Tupelo, the birthplace of The King!
Farquhar surely couldn’t help that the Union was advancing toward his plantation. He was a patriotic Confederate, so he tried to burn down the bridge that the Union controlled. Not really wandering around.
These kinds of tricks were commonplace in the Civil War. There are dozens of stories of officers writing up false battle plans and “accidentally” leaving them behind in the wake of enemy troops, soldiers impersonating civilians, civilians impersonating soldiers, planting of explosives, covert operations, etc. In fact, Ambrose Bierce spent a bit of time in the Union army, so he was probably exposed to a lot of these sorts of operations. I’m sure that he meant Farquhar to be the victim of a fairly routine Union “sting” operation.
This, by the way, is an example of a picket post: http://www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/pcoll/civilwar/82-312.JPG
Probably not too hard to elude if it were a half a mile from the bridge.
The “student of hanging” phrase is definitely not meant to foreshadow. The reader is already well aware that Farquhar is going to be hanged. The phrase is probably there to serve as a bit of irony for the reader, or maybe it is a merely a coincidental byproduct of the way that Bierce was writing the dialog.
I like Rebecca’s response, but I’d like to add that perhaps the choice of the word “student” means to say that a student would have seen or studied hangings to the extent of being particularly cautious, instead of or in addition to particularly able to elude death. Of course, Farquhar being so eager to sabotage the bridge, my meaning doesn’t apply to him.
I agree with your observation. I noticed the mixing of beauty with horror or dread, too. The same thing seemed to happen in a few places in the story, and I’ve seen it in other writing too. I think it adds to the surreality of a situation. After all, this man was in his home with his family only a few days ago. I’ve never seen somebody actually die before, but after hearing a lot of houpla in the news whenever somebody dies, it seems like what would truly be sickening about an execution is how mundane it really would be: the sun still rises, the grass still grows, etc, just like any other day. The author’s description of the water and the sun help to show how normal and mundane the environment is surrounding this execution.
I think that “trust” is just an archaic word for “thrust”, and not a play on words by the part of Bierce. I haven’t been able to find any definition of “trust” that has anything to do with knives or combat. If it were a play on words, it would seem far too ostentatious to match the style of the rest of the story.
The lieutenant on the shore is a junior officer who would rank somewhere between the sergeant and the captain on the bridge. The most senior person at the scene is definitely the army captain.
Except perhaps with respect to The Matrix, I don’t think the word “sentinel” has very much to do with machinery or mindlessness. It generally refers to something or somebody that observes or keeps watch. Beside, why would Bierce use vocabulary to bring attention to the mindlessness of the sentry while all the soldiers present were really only following the commandant’s orders?
Christina, in fact, the word sinister comes from a Latin word sinistra, meaning “left”.
“He wore a moustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers.” In this case, does “no whiskers” mean that he doesn’t have a 5 o’clock shadow? I’ve always thought whiskers would be a moustache. I guess it means he’s well-shaven, since the section seems to be showing that he is well-dressed, etc.