"The Man and the Snake" is a short story by American Civil War soldier, wit, and writer Ambrose Bierce.
"The Man and the Snake" shows that "death for Bierce was hardly the occasion for high tragic or sublime musings; nor was it particularly repulsive but instead a sort of low comedy, in which the joke is often played upon the reader".
[2] Bierce explored the idea of a man rendered psychologically paralysed in several other narratives, including "One of the Missing".
In this war story, a man dies from a hypnotic fear of the "menacing stare of the gun barrel", which actually is empty and harmless.
[3] A similar plot was used by Harris Merton Lyon in the short story "An Unused Rattlesnake".