The Doppelganger In Bierce's Short Stories

Abstract:
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (1842-1914?) was best known during his lifetime for his vituperative political satire and acerbic wit in his legendary "Prattle" column as well as his epigrammatic Devils Dictionary. Modern Bierce scholars are now recognizing Bierce 's unique mastery of the short story form, insofar as his stories reflect the mind of an iconoclast during an age of realism. One of the most fascinating aspects of Ambrose Bierce 's short stories is the appearance of the double motif or doppelganger. Bierce extends the figure of the double, which appears in many of his stories, to reflect his dissatisfaction with the limitations of the contemporary realistic aesthetic and to express his pessimistic perspective on developing nineteenth

Robert Rogers points out that the mirror image as double is directly related to the Narcissus legend in which a young man falls in love with his own reflection in a puddle. He goes on to assert that the mirror double is particularly uncanny because it is an exact duplicate, not merely a similar self (Rogers, 19). A Resumed Identity offers the most simplistic treatment of this theme; yet, it shows Bierce 's interest in the double in a more m o d e m sense as a harbinger of death. In this work an old man returns to the battlefields of his youth. At some point in his journey, he has also lost his memory. After this failure, he sees himself only as a young lieutenant who has been separated from his army. While searching for his companions, he becomes aware of his fatigue and the lean and withered appearance of his hands and face. However-, it is not until he sees his reflection in a puddle that his situation becomes clear: "Almost within an arm 's length was a little depression in the earth; it had been filled by a recent rain— a pool of clear water. He crept to it to revive himself, lifted the upper part of his body on his trembling arms, thrust forward his head and saw the reflection of his face, as in a mirror. He uttered a terrible cry. “His arms gave way; he fell, face

The protagonist of this work, John Bartine, expresses unusual trepidations concerning an inherited watch which his Tory great-grandfather had owned before his disappearance. When 3artine is questioned about his reaction to this occurrence, "he flamed out, bringing his clenched hand down upon the table as if he had been in a public house dicing with blackguards— ’my view of it is that it was a characteristically dastardly assassination by that damned traitor, Washington, and his ragamuffin rebels! '" (III, 271-72). Such an answer, of course, is distinctly out of place at the end of the nineteenth century; the character who really articulates this view is Bartine’s Doppelganger, his Tory great-grandfather. That Bartine has a great deal of consanguinity with this figure is evidenced by the portrait in the watch cases:
"That," he [Bartine] replied, gravely smiling, "is not I; it is my excellent great-grandfather, the late Bramwell Olcott Bartine, Esquire, of Virginia. He was younger then than later— about my age, in fact. It is said to resemble me; do you think