Fool Me Once

When I read An Occurrence on Owl Creek Bridge, I never questioned that the events taking place might not actually be happening. But looking back on it, why wouldn’t I question it? Why would I think the rope miraculously breaking would be a plausible event to take place? But, in the world of fiction anything can happen, anything is possible, especially for the protagonist. The main character can make an extraordinary escape, or survive a fall from a hundred foot drop, or dodge every bullet the bad guy shoots no matter how close in range they are. They can do anything. I expect them to do the impossible. I expect that they will somehow have managed to cling onto a branch after falling off the side of a cliff. I expect that the bullet that hit them didn’t kill them—of course it only got lodged in the small book they happened to have in their front pocket. There was some false security I had in the protagonist that they at least wouldn’t die, even if other important characters around them did. But, Bierce manipulated that little universal truth that I clung to.

A few months ago I read the final book in a trilogy (I won’t name it… spoilers?) and it defied my expectations regarding how a series “should” end. The female protagonist—the main character—died. She was shot three times while saving the day. Despite my initial shock, I wasn’t heartbroken because in the back of my mind I thought: “she’s still alive, she’s injured and almost dead, but she’ll survive”. Because that’s what the main character does in the works of fiction… even if she’s been shot three times. No matter what happens to them somehow they survive. So I kept reading, waiting for the moment when she miraculously returned from the “dead”. She lay in a hospital bed and the male protagonist sat next to her obviously heartbroken. And I knew the moment was coming: he would take her hand, beg her to survive, and she would wake up. But she never did.

I was furious. I felt like the author had somehow betrayed me. It was some unwritten law, some unspoken truth that the protagonist—the hero, the main character—survives. That was the hope and the lie I clung to.

I suppose after reading the above-mentioned book I should have realized that my universal truth about protagonists was a lie, a little manipulation I was meant to find security in. But Bierce fooled me again. Reading An Occurrence on Owl Creek Bridge I never doubted that Farquhar’s noose had snapped, that he managed to free his hands from their ties despite being underwater, that every bullet shot at him missed, and that he walked all day through woods he didn’t know despite literally having been hanged earlier that day. I didn’t doubt it because it seemed possible for the protagonist.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Hopefully I’ll learn that I can’t always trust my expectations.