ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the same textual choices generate incompatible thematic meanings and portray conflicting character images in the dual trajectory of signification in Ambrose Bierce’s “A Horseman in the Sky” (1891), which forms an implicit yet sharp contrast with the single thematic trajectory in Bierce’s “The Affair at Coulter’s Notch” on the same topic: a soldier’s having to perform his duty in war. Previous critics have put the two narratives on a par with each other because their plot developments both convey the cruelty and inhumanity of war. This chapter reveals that the two narratives are at the same time also essentially different from each other because only “A Horseman in the Sky” has a covert progression, an undercurrent that offers a positive presentation of the father’s and the son’s strong sense of duty. The covert progression implicitly invites readers’ approval and respect of both father and son, even with a certain degree of deification of the father, thus forming a sharp contrast with the overt plot where both father and son are merely victims of war, just as Coulter and his family in the other narrative.
