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“One Kind of Officer”

It’s a very foggy day and Captain Ransome is just trying to follow his orders exactly. Sure, this means that he mows down one of his fellow Union battalions, but what can you do? Bierce telegraphs the first plot twist in this one but the second punch is born out of rationality. Food for one of those “letter of the law” vs. “spirit of the law” discussions.

“The Mocking-Bird”

A Union soldier is pretty sure that he shot a Confederate soldier in the night but he can’t find the body and his conscience is piqued by the accolades he is given for being brave during a scare that he himself initiated. The fabulist language that Bierce uses to describe Grayrock’s dream of his past - the Realm of Conjecture, the Enchanted Land - reminds me of Dunsany fantasies.

“Parker Adderson, Philosopher”

This time it’s a Union spy who is caught by Confederates. He is remarkably glib in the face of death, distracting the general, but caught off-guard when the general suddenly condemns the man to a firing squad when the spy was expecting a hanging in the morning. Adderson sounds infused with The Devil’s Dictionary - “…you cannot condemn me to Heaven.”

“An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge”

Is it possible to spoil this story? I distinctly recall being shown what I assume was the French short film in high school but this is my first reading. This story is great; Bierce’s details of Farquhar’s altered consciousness are exquisite and the apparent unraveling of reality as Farquhar travels to his house make an interesting base for Weird Fiction.

“The Story of a Conscience”

This has the feel of one of the Bushido-centered stories of Lone Wolf and Cub. A Union officer outs a Confederate spy, but acknowledges that the latter once saved the former’s life in a surprising act of compassion. The Union soldier finds it difficult to do what he feels is his duty, but does. His conscience demands its own sympathetic action.

“The Major’s Tale”

This story about toxic masculinity involves officers pressuring a young, androgynous man into dressing up as a woman in order to play a practical joke on a ladykiller. The most fascinating part of this story is the psychodrama that Bierce outlines in an essay about men telling stories about their amorous affairs and what their listeners may be thinking.

“The Affair At Coulter’s Notch”

A ghastly story about interpersonal military conflicts enacted upon the battlefield. Bierce telegraphs the twist behind this one pretty well when the officer starts to tell the colonel the story of why the general may have it out for Coulter, hinting at the significance of the house that suffers during the bombardment.

“The Coup de Grâce”

There is something of a bro-triangle going on here, with one affable brother - Creede, his considerably less affable brother - Caffal, and a friend of Creede who Caffal loathes. Remember the part in Popular Sitcom where the surly brother catches his least favorite person just as he is administering a mercy killing to the beloved brother?? No?

“A Horseman In the Sky”

A son disappoints his father by leaving their Confederate state to join the Union army and, later on, finds himself questioning whether he is capable of killing a Confederate spy when he confronts one while on watch. Not to spoil anything, but it isn’t a question of whether or not the soldier is losing his nerve over having to kill just any old spy.

“One Officer, One Man”

A portrait of… an officer who conveniently avoided active duty for two years before being sent to the front lines and feeling incredibly shamed by veteran soldiers at his traumatic response to hearing his first shell strike and seeing a man shot dead directly in front of him. This has the ring of Bierce’s psychological horror stories, but the twist is not the least bit ambiguous.

“Chickamauga”

😬

This is about the horrors of war from the point of view of a six year old child who has only the most fanciful ideas about it, handed down by his father through romanticized illustrations because - well, there is a double-barreled shotgun of twists that Bierce delivers, one of which clarifies the unreality of the narrative, the other brutally thrusting reality upon the child.

“A Tough Tussle”

Another psychological horror story. Byring is even more revolted by dead bodies than the average person and unknowingly establishes his relief post within viewing distance of the body of a Confederate soldier. Somewhere in here is a poetically anthropological monologue on the understanding of the time of why people are instinctually afraid of corpses.

“A Son of the Gods”

In what might as well be a memoir, Bierce describes a valiant man who risks all in order to determine the presence and position of enemy forces, but is favored as though he were protected by the gods in the killing fields of the Illiad. Bierce also muses about how soldiers dehumanize opposing forces, even in the face of anthropological evidence of their humanity.

“One of the Missing”

Bierce outlines how fate engineers something similar to but not quite a person being buried alive. The union soldier is trapped between the fallen timbers of a building, unable to move his head, and uncomfortably aware that the rifle that he had cocked and loaded - intending to shoot some retreating confederates - has fallen and is pointing directly at his forehead.

“Killed At Resaca”

Another story about a soldier with an idiosyncrasy that walks with bravery. Lieutenant Brayle is blithely brave to the point of being foolhardy and, as can be expected, eventually dies for it. This isn’t the twist, of course; it’s Bierce’s biting reveal of the motivation behind the Lieutenant’s courage, even lauded by the rebel forces.

“Jupiter Doke, Brigadier-General”

This epistolary story concerns a bumbling appointee to the union army who nonetheless Mr. Beans himself to victory against 25,000 soldiers by way of, as revealed at the end, a stampede of 2,300 mules, which he had gathered as his primary means of retreat, and which is taken in the heat of the night as a tornado.

“George Thurston”

A darkly humorous piece about a first-lieutenant who has an absurd reaction toward impending death, folding his arms and confronting it with unnatural stoicism. There is uncertainty in this story - a suggestion this is some sort of almost hypnotic or ritual reaction to mortal terror, which begs the question of what went wrong with the swing.

Action! Drama! The three boys abroad suffer varying degrees of peril. Emil gets a shipwreck but survives. Dan KILLS A GUY (in defending someone, of course) and learns a hard lesson in prison. Nat’s vices are less salacious. The Plumfield stuff is wildly goofy, including some self-congratulatory drama-acting that feels a bit too tidy, and this last fifty pages ends in the middle of a TEMPERANCE lecture.

25 more pages of the March reunion before Jo sends her boys off to the wide world and then we start to see the fruits of her “harvest” as we see their fates. Josie gets her own chapter, the thrust of which - between her and Nan - appears to be Alcott emphasizing the importance of education for women. Thankfully, she appears to put an end to the aborted Nan and Tom romance fairy early on.

Part of what is hard to bear about this book is that we grew up with Jo through her late teens and getting married and while she loved to speak in Little Women she ruled Plumfield with a more or less invisible hand. Now that her boys are mostly young men, they are capable of understanding (if not agreeing with) her advice, and her earnest dialogues come across as a bit crass given her willful history.

“‘I believe in suffrage of all kinds. I adore women, and will die for them at any moment if it will help the cause.’”
“‘Living and working for it is harder, and therefore more honorable. Men are always ready to die for us, but not to make our lives worth having. Cheap sentiment and bad logic.’”

The first quarter of the book is a family reunion following a ten-year time skip. Alcott makes it easier by turning Plumfield into the March family compound. Like Little Women, this follows the Plumfield crew into adulthood with Jo as familial tactician as she frets over the futures of her Boys. The compound simplifies the inevitable conflicts where her blood family and adopted one intermingle.