One Summer Night Short Story

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One Summer Night By: Ambrose Bierce In a time where the medical facilities were far from as developed as today and the mispronouncing of the dead was a not-so uncommon thing for the practicing doctors, a corrupt society seems to be thriving. At least that is the case in the medical-field in the short story “One summer night” by Ambrose Bierce. The exact date of the writing of this fictional short story is unknown, or at least I was unable to find a credible source with the information. We do know that it was one of Ambrose Bierce’s last projects, who passed away in 1913. It is quite rare that you hear about a person who wrongfully gets declared dead by modern day doctors, but back in the days, doctors had difficulties distinguishing a…show more content…
Ambrose Bierce uses a lot of negatively charged adjectives such as “grey”, “pallid” and “haggard” which is also considered old fashioned language since it’s not words we usually hear in Everyday-English. The description of the environment/setting is also very typical for the horror-genre: “It was a dark summer night, shot through with infrequent shimmers of lightning silently firing a cloud lying low in the west and portending a storm” (p. 1 l. 15). The description here is almost stereotypical for a horror story because we always associate darkness, lightning and stormy weather with…show more content…
There is the fear of the unknown since we, as the readers, have no idea of what the grave robbers, as you may call them, are capable of and what their motives are with the (presumed) corpse of Henry. A theme could also be about a struggle with good vs. evil where evil ultimately wins, as the corrupt members of society (Jess and the medical students) are the last men standing. Another theme could be corruption in the medical- and funeral field. You are supposed to trust both parties as a citizen of an honest society; especially you should trust both parties with the body of one of your loved ones. For them to take advantage of the situation like this is also a horrific act. So perhaps the message that Ambrose Bierce is trying to send with writing this story, is that you should be careful of which type of people you chose to give your trust to. They might not be what they appear to be, even the noblest medical student are capable of committing a seemingly victimless crime, which turns into a much more serious deal. Maybe Ambrose Bierce wanted to highlight a problem with the past times (his present time) modern society where these incidents perhaps occurred on a regular basis. It is also a great story which showcases the human nature of greed, and to what extent we are capable of going to benefit ourselves at the cost of other people’s

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