What We're Owed

An author is someone who writes a story. They build a world that they see in their minds, and lead readers through it. Anything they tell the reader is by their choice. Anything the readers’ assume afterwards is technically the readers’ fault. So… what does that make an author obligated to tell?

Let’s look at An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge for a second. There’s a lot of things that we are told and yet a lot of information that Bierce keeps from us. There is vibrant detail about the surroundings. Yet we lack in facts of defining what is real and what is not (although it certainly was hinted at). So, the second the story is done, we can’t help but wonder who made the illusion: the narrator or Farquhar? When did Farquhar actually die?

               Well, we’ll never really know. Bierce never gave away a single thing about the story afterwards. Then he disappeared in the mountains within Mexico over a century ago. Unless he is an immortal figure of some sort, we’ll never know. Instead our brains try to wrap themselves around the gaps of story and fill them in with our own thoughts. Maybe Farquhar died after hallucinating his own escape. Maybe the narrator was expanding upon Farquhar’s imagination. Maybe it’s just the narrator making things up. The bigger thing that comes up from it is the fact that the narrator strung us along the story thinking that Farquhar managed to escape, playing upon our sympathies and naïve ways. The reader holds the main fault for allowing themselves to believe such a thing (myself included). But then we all look at how much was withheld from us. Don’t we deserve to know more? In fact, don’t we deserve a reason for why we were deceived in such a way?

               Like I’ve mentioned before, it is technically our fault to some extent. We let ourselves believe it. The author told us what he wanted to, and we followed it with our own thoughts going on. We try to make some kind of sense out of the story. Whether it’s a survival skill or just because we want logic within doesn’t really matter. We feel within that trap of trying to make sense of it. All Bierce had to do was withhold information from us. We manipulated ourselves for the rest of it. It’s our own thoughts and ideas, and therefore our own fault, for going along that line of thought. The author just laid down the story in his words. He owed us nothing more: no explanation, no sequel, nothing.

Now I’m jumping over to the other side of the story: the author’s. There is a story that I have been writing and posting online. Purposely, I’ve been withholding several important pieces of information from the readers. Some of my reviewers have mentioned their own theories about what I’ve been withholding. Most recently, there had been an ongoing idea that a character’s true identity was a certain woman. However that woman they thought it was has been dead for months. Once I revealed that fact, one reviewer asks plainly “Who is she?” Another one just states she doesn’t understand anything because I have yet to reveal all of the backstory for it. She requests that I do a flashback and explain it all for convenience of understanding everything going on.

               Despite both reviews, I have no plans of answering either until I feel that the time is right to do so. I am not going to simply rush the revelations of certain facts. It is my story at the end of the day. While I try to be kind to all of those who have read my stuff, I am not willing to sacrifice the point of my ways to satisfy their curiosity. To some level, I enjoy people speculating what is to happen while knowing fully well what will. I do not owe them any sort of explanation within the story of what is going to happen. For me, part of the reader’s journey is to try to guess at everything.

               I personally enjoyed the manipulation that Bierce accomplished in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. While it does make one feel slightly idiotic for not catching it sooner, it just shows how our world is so interesting by simply withholding of facts. And as this manipulation was not harmful, it was fun. All of the unanswered questions that came from that manipulation? We can interpret them all we want. Bierce owes us nothing more.