Review and Analysis of “Wild Horses” by Rick Bass

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It’s the burdens we bear — or don’t

Wild Horses is a powerful short story by Rick Bass that was originally published in The Paris Review in 1988. On its surface, it’s about a man who feels guilt for the death of his friend and his attempts to help relieve the grief of the woman who was going to marry that man. On the subsurface, it’s about the burdens we bear and how our spirits have to be broken to be able to bear them, or we are destroyed.

The story is written in limited omniscient with views into the minds of the two main characters, Sydney and Karen. They are both grappling with the death of Henry. Henry was Sydney’s good friend and Karen’s fiancé. Henry, for reasons that are not fully explained, on the night before his wedding to Karen while celebrating with Sydney and other friends in some kind of bachelor party, beat his chest like Tarzan and then jumped from a railroad trestle high above the Mississippi River. His body is never found. Sydney feels tremendous guilt that he wasn’t somehow able to stop Henry from jumping, and allows Karen to physically beat him regularly in an attempt to help her relieve her grief and his guilt.

The bridge is never named in the story, but it is almost certainly the Old Vicksburg Bridge across the Mississippi River between Delta, Louisiana and Vicksburg, Mississippi. A…