# I explained — Can Such Things Be?

> Chapter companion for Can Such Things Be? by Ambrose Bierce.

## What happens

Halpin Frayser wakes from a dreamless sleep in a forest and inexplicably speaks the name 'Catherine Larue.' He returns to sleep and enters a nightmare where he walks a haunted road, finds blood everywhere, and feels persecuted by invisible malevolent forces. He attempts to write an appeal with a blood-dipped twig, but is paralyzed by the apparition of his own mother in grave clothes.

## Themes in this chapter

### Death and the Supernatural

The chapter opens with Frayser's death mentioned, and his nightmare is filled with supernatural elements including blood, whispers, and his mother's ghost.

### Madness and Perception

Frayser's dream blurs reality and hallucination, with his senses overwhelmed by terror and guilt he cannot recall.

### Guilt and Retribution

Frayser feels his nightmare is expiation for an unknown crime, suggesting a theme of guilt and punishment.

## Character check-ins

### Halpin Frayser

Protagonist who wakes in the forest, speaks a mysterious name, and experiences a terrifying nightmare.

## Key lines

> One dark night in midsummer a man waking from a dreamless sleep in a forest lifted his head from the earth, and staring a few moments into the blackness, said: 'Catherine Larue.'

On a midsummer night, a man awoke from a deep sleep in the woods, raised his head, and after staring into the darkness, spoke the name 'Catherine Larue.'

_Opening lines establishing the mysterious utterance._

> He thought he was walking along a dusty road that showed white in the gathering darkness of a summer night.

In his dream, he imagined himself walking a dusty road that appeared white in the twilight.

_Description of the dream setting._

> It stained his fingers; it was blood!

The liquid in the pool turned out to be blood, staining his fingers.

_Discovery of blood in the dream._

> He wrote with terrible rapidity, the twig in his fingers rilling blood without renewal; but in the middle of a sentence his hands denied their service to his will, his arms fell to his sides, the book to the earth; and powerless to move or cry out, he found himself staring into the sharply drawn face and blank, dead eyes of his own mother, standing white and silent in the garments of the grave!

He wrote frantically with a blood-dipped twig, but suddenly lost control of his hands, dropping the book, and was paralyzed as he saw his mother's corpse-like face staring at him.

_Climactic moment of the nightmare._

## Links

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- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/can_such_things_be_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/can_such_things_be_se/chapters