# I: Statement of Joel Hetman, Jr. explained — Can Such Things Be? > Chapter companion for Can Such Things Be? by Ambrose Bierce. ## What happens Joel Hetman, Jr. recounts the brutal murder of his mother, Julia Hetman, and his father's subsequent psychological decline. After returning home from Yale, he learns that his mother was strangled by an unknown assailant. His father, Joel Hetman Sr., becomes increasingly paranoid and haunted, eventually vanishing under mysterious circumstances during a moonlit walk. ## Themes in this chapter ### Guilt and Retribution The father's unexplained guilt and paranoia following the murder suggest a hidden connection to the crime. ### Madness and Perception The father's hallucination of a figure on the road and his subsequent disappearance blur the line between reality and delusion. ## Character check-ins ### Joel Hetman, Jr. The narrator and son of the murdered Julia Hetman; he recounts the tragedy and his father's descent. ### Joel Hetman, Sr. The father, who discovers his wife's body and later experiences hallucinations and disappears. ### Julia Hetman The murdered mother; her death is the central event of the chapter. ## Key lines > I am the most unfortunate of men. Rich, respected, fairly well educated and of sound health—with many other advantages usually valued by those having them and coveted by those who have them not—I sometimes think that I should be less unhappy if they had been denied me, for then the contrast between my outer and my inner life would not be continually demanding a painful attention. Joel Hetman, Jr. feels that his wealth and health only deepen his misery by highlighting the gap between his public success and private torment. _This opening establishes the narrator's profound grief and the central irony of his situation._ > One day I received a telegram from my father of such urgency that in compliance with its unexplained demand I left at once for home. At the railway station in Nashville a distant relative awaited me to apprise me of the reason for my recall: my mother had been barbarously murdered—why and by whom none could conjecture. A cryptic telegram from his father summons Joel home, where he learns from a relative that his mother has been brutally killed by an unknown assailant. _This sets the mystery in motion, highlighting the suddenness and horror of the event._ > As we approached the gate to our dwelling, whose front was in shadow, and in which no light shone, my father suddenly stopped and clutched my arm, saying, hardly above his breath: 'God! God! what is that?' During a moonlit walk home, Joel's father stops in terror, claiming to see something in the road ahead that Joel cannot perceive. _This moment foreshadows the father's psychological unraveling and eventual disappearance._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/can_such_things_be_se/chapters/i-statement-of-joel-hetman-jr - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/can_such_things_be_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/can_such_things_be_se/chapters