Answer to Question 1
- Bierce lays in enough hints to make most readers accept the surprise ending, though they may want to reread the story just to make sure. In paragraph 5, though Farquhar makes a conscious effort to think about his wife and children, he has already begun to experience an alteration in his sense of time. Recall the old general belief that at the moment of death we see our whole lives pass by again in a flash. As soon as an escape plot forms in Farquhars mind (par. 6), the sergeant moves off the plank and the noose tightens around the doomed mans neck. Since we know from the ending that the rope does not break, what happens to Farquhar after the flashback (par. 817)except for the physical sensations of hanginghas to be a fast-moving hallucination in the mind of a dying man.
Bierce has planted clues that this is so. With superhuman effort Farquhar manages to free his bound hands. His senses are preternaturally keen and alert (par. 20). His ability to dodge all the bullets fired at him seems miraculous. The forest through which he walks is unfamiliar and menacing; the stars above him are grouped in strange constellations; he hears whispers in an unknown tongue (par. 34). Soon he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet (par. 35). His wife greets him with a smile of ineffable joy (par. 36)then he is dead.
Answer to Question 2
- When the plot begins to concern itself with the trap that Judge Hidalgo sets for Vidal, we might become ready to assume that the Judge is Vidals antagonist; it is easy to focus on the struggle that ensues between the two men. This emphasis is reinforced when Vidal decides to take vengeance on Hidalgo for his own shame over his mothers suicide.
However, it is important never to forget the storys title and opening lines: Nicolas Vidal always knew he would lose his head over a woman. So it was foretold on the day of his birth. The story is, in actuality, about Vidals true antagonistthe Judges wife, Casilda. As events ultimately unfold, we are led to see what has been there for the reader to embrace from the very beginning: that she is the true center of the story. It is she who, faced with her husbands sudden death and the imminent danger to her children, thinks swiftly and acts decisively to save them, at whatever cost to her own body or morality. Her final triumph leaves the two principal male charactersespeciall
y Nicolas Vidallooking rigid, short-sighted, and doomed. It could be argued that, in the end, these two prideful men are shaped much more by Casilda and their own defects than by any larger destiny.
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