The Moonlit Road and Other Ghost and Horror Stories Lesson Plan

Did you think the narrator of "The Secret to Macarger's Gulch" was a man the whole time?

The narrator goes unnamed for much of the story. Before he is named, could the narrator be a woman? Why or why not? Students may recognize that hunting alone in the wilderness at that time was an activity likely reserved for men, but that doesn't mean the narrator has to be a man. Do we assume they're a man simply because Bierce is a man? While this may not be a problem for this story, how can readers' assumptions be an issue more generally? When casting movie versions of books, not all characters are well-described; it matters if people's default assumption is white. Similarly, some...