The Boarded Window

Hanu had to analyse "The Boarded Window" by Ambrose Bierce for a class assignment. You can read the story online here. Here is Hanuman's analysis:

In Ambrose Bierce’s “The Boarded Window”, the physical setting of the story is the cabin with a boarded window in the Mid-Western wilderness of the 1800s. The main thing that creates an unsettling feeling is the mystery of the boarded up window, and how very few people knew why it was boarded up, and why it remained that way. The mood that results from the author’s description is one of ambiguity and foreboding. The theme seems to be that people often try to lock up their secrets and grief, and keep them inside where no one can know. In the final lines, however, an ironic twist influences the final theme or meaning of the story by showing that we, like the old man, may have been deceived about the woman’s death. Bierce uses many techniques to create mystery, such as the unreliable narrator, who uses words like “perhaps” and “apparently” in almost every sentence, as well as Murdock’s mental state and the darkness itself, which don’t allow Murdock or us to see what is really happening. I was surprised by the twist, but not shocked, because even the twist is uncertain and unfulfilling. The reader does not have enough information to be sure if the wife was alive the whole time, in a coma which she woke from when attacked by the panther, or when, if ever, she fought with the animal and bit its ear. Did it happen before Murdock woke up, or after he fired his rifle and lost consciousness again? In reading the story, my main feeling was sadness for the man, who we know lived a long and lonely life. Afterward, the impossibility of knowing what really happened made me think of the story again and again, but then finally give up unsatisfied.