An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

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For the Twilight Zone episode, see An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (film). For the American Dad episode, see An Incident at Owl Creek.
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"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
Author Ambrose Bierce
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) short story
Published in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians
Publication date 1890

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is a short story by American author Ambrose Bierce (1842-1913). Originally published by the The San Francisco Examiner in 1890, it was first collected in Bierce's 1891 book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. The story, which is set during the Civil War, is famous for its irregular time sequence and twist ending. It is Bierce's most anthologized story.[1]

Contents

Plot summary [edit]

Set during the American Civil War, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is the story of Peyton Farquhar, a Confederate sympathizer condemned to death by hanging from Owl Creek Bridge. At the beginning of the story, the protagonist stands bound at the bridge's edge. It is later revealed that after a disguised Union scout enlisted him to attempt to demolish the bridge, he was caught in the act.

In the first part of the story, a gentlemanly planter in his mid-30s is standing on a railroad bridge in Alabama. Six military men and a company of infantry men are present. The man is to be hanged. As he is waiting, he thinks of his wife and children. Then he is distracted by a tremendous noise. He can not identify this noise, other than that it sounds like the clanging of a blacksmith's hammer on the anvil. He cannot tell if it was far away or nearby. He finds himself apprehensively awaiting each strike, which seem to grow further and further apart. It is revealed that this noise is the ticking of his watch. Then, an escape plan flashes through his mind: "throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, take to the woods and get away home." His thoughts stray back to his wife and children. The soldiers drop him down.

The story flashes back in time: Peyton Farquhar lives in the South and is a major Confederate supporter. He goes out of his way to perform services to support and help the Confederate side. One day, a gray-clad soldier appears at his house and tells Farquhar that Union soldiers in the area have been repairing the railroads, including the one over Owl Creek Bridge. Interested, Farquhar asks if it is possible to sabotage the bridge, to which the soldier replies that he could burn it down. When the soldier leaves, it is revealed that he is a Union scout who has lured Farquhar into a trap, as anyone caught interfering with the railroads would face the noose.

When he is hanged, the rope breaks. Farquhar falls into the water. While underwater, he seems to take little interest in the fact that his hands, which now have a life of their own, are freeing themselves and untying the rope from around his neck. Once he finally reaches the surface, he realizes his senses are superhuman. He can see the individual blades of grass and the colors of bugs on the leaves of trees, despite the fact that he is whirling around in a river. Realizing that the men are shooting at him, he escapes and makes it to dry land. He travels through an uninhabited and seemingly-unending forest, attempting to reach his home 30 miles away. During his journey through the day and night, he is fatigued, footsore, and famished, urged on by the thought of his wife and children. He begins experiencing strange physiological events, hearing unusual noises from the wood, and believes he has fallen asleep while walking. He wakes to see his perfectly preserved home, with his beautiful and youthful wife outside. As he runs forward to reach her, he suddenly feels a searing pain in his neck; a white light flashes, and everything goes black.

It is revealed that Farquhar never escaped at all; he imagined the entire third part of the story during the time between falling through the bridge and the noose finally breaking his neck.

Stories with similar structure [edit]

The plot device of a long period of subjective time passing in an instant, such as the imagined experiences of Farquhar while falling, has been explored by several authors.[2] An early literary antecedent appears in Don Juan Manuel's Tales of Count Lucanor, Chapter XII, "Of that which happened to a Dean of Santiago, with Don Illan, the Magician, who lived at Toledo", in which a life happens in an instant (1337).[citation needed] This story was rewritten by Jorge Luis Borges in "The Wizard Postponed", in his book A Universal History of Infamy (1935). A similar hallucination of a year of subjective time passing at the moment of death occurs in Borges' short story "The Secret Miracle" (1944).[citation needed] Tobias Wolff's short story "Bullet in the Brain" (1995) reveals the protagonist's past through relating what he remembers -- and does not -- in the millisecond after he is fatally shot. David Lynch's film Lost Highway has also been compared to An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, although it has also been interpreted as a Möbius strip storyline.[3][4]

Adaptations [edit]

Several adaptations of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" have been produced.

  • The Spy (also released as The Bridge) was a silent movie adaptation of the story, directed in 1929 by Charles Vidor.
  • Issue #23 of the comics magazine Eerie, published in September 1969 by Warren Publishing, contained an adaptation of the story.
  • Owl Creek Bridge, a BAFTA Cymru-winning short film by director John Giwa-Amu, has been showcased internationally. The story was adapted to follow the last days of Khalid, a young boy who is caught by a gang of racist youths.
  • In 2006, Ambrose Bierce: Civil War Stories was released, which contains adaptations of three of Ambrose Bierce's short stories, among them "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" directed by Brian James Egan. The DVD also contains an extended version of the story with more background and detail than the one included in the trilogy.
  • The Escapist is a 2008 film directed by Rupert Wyatt. In an interview with Trevor Groth, Wyatt said "The structure of the film's plot was inspired by a well known short story written in the 19th century by Ambrose Bierce called 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge'." In the final scene, Frank Perry visits Rizza's cell, brings the book, and says he must have read it about a dozen times.

Influence [edit]

  • Adam Young has said that this story was the inspiration for his name in the electronica musical project, Owl City.[6]
  • The second song of Serifs' self-titled album is entitled, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge".

Notes [edit]

  1. ^ Blume (2004), p. 211
  2. ^ Ambrose Bierce's "An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge": an annotated critical edition. Robert C. Evans ed. 2003, Locust Hill Press, West Cornwall, CT. ISBN 0-9722289-6-9.
  3. ^ http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/Issue_8/thain.html#20
  4. ^ http://metaphilm.com/index.php/detail/reading-inland-empire/
  5. ^ "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1962)". NY Times. Retrieved 2010-01-09. 
  6. ^ "Why I Call Myself Owl City". Owl City Blog. Retrieved 2012-01-22. 

References [edit]

  • Blume, Donald T. (2004). Ambrose Bierce's Civilians and Soldiers in Context: A Critical Study. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press. ISBN 0-87338-790-2.
  • Owens, David M. (1994). "Bierce and Biography: The Location of Owl Creek Bridge". American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 26(3), pp. 82–89.
  • Stoicheff, Peter. (1993). "'Something Uncanny': The Dream Structure in Ambrose Bierce's 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge'". Studies In Short Fiction, 30(3), 349–358.
  • Talley, Sharon. (2010). Ambrose Bierce and the Dance of Death. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 978-1-57233-690-2.
  • Yost, David. (2007). "Skins Before Reputations: Subversions of Masculinity in Ambrose Bierce and Stephen Crane". War, Literature & the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities, 19(1/2), 247–260.

External links [edit]

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