The mood of “A Horseman in the Sky” is both haunting and suspenseful. While the story starts off fairly even-keeled—as the narrator describes the geography of the stretch of land in Virginia upon which the story takes place—it quickly becomes unsettling when a statuesque Confederate horseman seems to appear out of nowhere and Druse must grapple with whether or not to kill the man to protect the Union troops. The anxious and haunting mood comes across in the following passage, as Druse reacts to the horseman’s presence:
Carter Druse grew pale; he shook in every limb, turned faint, and saw the statuesque group before him as black figures, rising, falling, moving unsteadily in arcs of circles in a fiery sky. His hand fell away from his weapon, his head slowly dropped until his face rested on the leaves in which he lay. This courageous gentleman and hardy soldier was near swooning from intensity of emotion.
Bierce’s language here effectively communicates the suspenseful mood in this moment. He uses imagery to help readers experience Druse’s anxiety alongside him, describing how he “grew pale,” “shook in every limb,” and “was near swooning from intensity of emotion.” Druse’s brief hallucination of the horseman “rising, falling, moving unsteadily in arcs of circles in a fiery sky” uses apocalyptic imagery to make the mood not only stressful but also haunting.
The mood shifts into an even darker register at the very end of the story, as Druse reveals to his sergeant that the horseman he killed was, in fact, his own father. This plot twist leaves readers shocked and devastated, forcing them to grapple with the horrors of war and what it means to prioritize duty to one’s morals over duty to one’s family.
