“A Horseman in the Sky” questions Romanticized representations of war in light of its human costs, which were particularly high in a conflict that made enemies of kin and countrymen. The view of human nature that emerges is driven as much by chance, fate, and error as by virtue, choice, and reason. The story suggests that the trauma of war defeats representation, memory, and reason. Reality is not accessible to human consciousness as it must first pass through the filters of the human senses and emotions.

The story begins in a real time and place—a sunny fall afternoon in 1861 in “western Virginia” (3)—with a soldier asleep on the side of a road. Such clues immediately indicate the Civil War. The narrator provides a detailed description of the landscape—a valley walled in by cliffs—as viewed from the position of the soldier above. The valley of full of optical illusions. The narrator says that one open area of the valley “looked hardly larger than an ordinary dooryard, but was really several acres in extent” (3). Such misjudgments of distance figure later in the story when the officer overestimates the trajectory of the horseman in the sky. A road and stream cross the valley, but where they enter and exit among the high cliffs is difficult to determine.