Jump to content

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
m →‎Television: copyedit
Line 24: Line 24:


Part I
Part I
: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 can not tell if it was far away or near by. 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.
:A gentlemanly roast chicken in his mid-20s 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 can not tell if it was far away or near by. 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.


Part II
Part II

Revision as of 20:11, 16 November 2009

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
Short story by Ambrose Bierce
Country USA
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)short story
Publication
Published inTales of Soldiers and Civilians
Publication date1890
For the Twilight Zone episode of the same name, see An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (film).

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (sometimes called "An Incident at Owl Creek Bridge") is a short story by Ambrose Bierce. It was originally published in 1890, and first collected in Bierce's 1891 book, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. The story is famous for its irregular time sequence and twist ending.

Plot summary

Set during the American Civil War, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is the story of Peyton Farquhar, a Confederate sympathizer condemned to die by hanging upon the Owl Creek Bridge of the title. The main character finds himself already bound at the bridge's edge at the beginning of the story. It is later revealed that a disguised Union scout enlisted him to attempt to demolish the bridge, and subsequently he was caught in the act.

Part I

A gentlemanly roast chicken in his mid-20s 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 can not tell if it was far away or near by. 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.

Part II

Peyton Farquhar is a captain in his 30s. He 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 grey-clad soldier appears at his house and tells Farquhar that the Union soldiers repairing the railroads are at the nearby Owl Creek Bridge. Farquhar takes interest and asks if it is possible to sabotage the stockade the soldiers have set up, to which the soldier replies that he could burn it down. When the soldier leaves, it is revealed that he is a Union soldier who has tempted Farquhar into a trap.

Part III

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. Once he realizes 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 starts to experience strange physiological events, hears unusual noises from the wood, and believes he has fallen asleep while walking. He wakes up to see his perfectly preserved home, with his beautiful, youthful, immaculately preserved wife outside it. 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.

Antecedents

The earliest literary antecedent of this story's central device appears in Don Juan Manuel's Libro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor y de Patronio ("Book of the Examples of Count Lucanor and of Patronio"), which was first published in 1335. Chapter XI contains a short story in which a lifetime happens in an instant.[1]

Adaptations

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.
  • Owl Creek Bridge was also the title of an award-winning World War II adaption directed by University of North Texas student Brad Eggerton. Unlike Bierce's original story, this eight-minute short film wasn't set during the Civil War. Instead, it followed a French resistance soldier as he flees from German soldiers during World War II.
  • 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.

Reception and influence

References to "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" in later works

  • In 2005, Kurt Vonnegut referred to "Occurrence" in his book A Man Without a Country as one of the greatest works of American literature, and called anyone who hadn't read it a "twerp".[2]
  • In the Lost episode "The Long Con," the character John Locke is seen flicking through a copy of the book, apparently searching for something.
  • There is a reference to this story and its author on the side of the main character's truck in Konami's survival horror game Silent Hill: Origins.
  • This story is referenced to in the "Laserblast" episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
  • In the NCIS episode "The Good Samaritan," the agents are directed to Owl Creek Bridge.

Works inspired by the story or employing a similar plot device

Many later works have employed twist endings similar to the story's.

Literary works

  • Another literary work that can be thought of as an adumbration of the Owl Creek Bridge theme is the short story "The Secret Miracle" by Jorge Luis Borges.
  • Flann O'Brien's novel The Third Policeman recounts a somewhat similar plot and twist, involving an escape from a hanging death and a journey home.
  • Sir William Golding's novel Pincher Martin uses a similar artifice, and Golding admits the similarity in an afterword to the novel.
  • "The Happening," a short story by Mash Edwards about the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center [1]
  • The Star Wars Expanded Universe story "The Longest Fall" describes the thoughts and memories of a distinguished imperial officer as he is force-choked at the hands of a cruel Dark Jedi overseer. In a similar fashion, he anticipates his coming execution, imagines his survival, and is revealed at the end to have died almost instantaneously (also by breaking of the neck).

Films

  • The 1962 horror cult classic Carnival of Souls parallels "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," in that the protagonist is the only survivor of an accident on a bridge, but goes on to live her life in an increasingly ghoulish manner only to find in the end that she had perished in the river.
  • The 1965 horror film Dr. Terror's House of Horrors employs a similar premise: Five men traveling on a train are met by a mysterious doctor, who proceeds to tell their fortunes. For each of them, he predicts a different fate, but each fate is horrific. He informs them that they only way they can avoid these terrible fates is by dying first. When the train finally stops, it turns out that the men are in some kind of limbo, having already perished in a train wreck.
  • Terry Gilliam's 1985 film Brazil
  • Martin Scorsese's 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ
  • The 1990 film Jacob's Ladder
  • David Lynch's 1997 film Lost Highway[3]
  • M. Night Shyamalan's 1999 film The Sixth Sense
  • Richard Kelly, the director of the 2001 film Donnie Darko, has said it was an inspiration for his film.
  • Richard Linklater's 2001 film Waking Life
  • The 2005 film Stay
  • The 2005 British horror film The Descent
  • The 2007 German film Yella employs the same plot device as An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. On her way to secure a better job and future in West Germany, East German Yella hesitantly agrees to a car ride from her estranged ex-husband. When she rejects taking him back, he drives both of them off a bridge and into a river. Yella emerges on the riverbank unscathed from the accident. Yet as she makes her way to the West, and following a series of premonitions that allow her to move from success to scandal to tragedy in the corporate business world, the final sequence reveals she did not survive the crash.
  • The 2007 film He Was a Quiet Man uses this plot format. One striking similarity is the "hints" that appear to the viewer that the imagined sequence of events are just that, imagined.
  • The 2007 film The Life Before Her Eyes
  • John Giwa-Amu's 2007 BAFTA Cymru-winning film Owl Creek Bridge
  • The 2008 film The Escapist

Television

  • The Tales from the Crypt episode "Till Death Do We Part" has a woman (Kate Vernon) living a revenge fantasy with her lover (John Stamos) in the mere seconds before she is executed.
  • The CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode "Working Stiffs" uses the same plot device as a man blows open a safe full of cash from a routine slot machine collection. The door flies past him and he grabs handfuls of money and makes a clean getaway from the police in the area only for the scene to return to the crime scene where he was actually impaled by the safe door. His escape was all in his imagination as he was dying.
  • The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Inner Light" has Captain Picard living an entire lifetime while unconscious for 25 minutes.
  • The episode "No Reason" of the TV series House is similar to "Occurrence" in plot.
  • The Heroes episode "Cold Snap" uses the same plot device.
  • The VR.5 episode "Simon's Choice" uses the same plot device. The hanging is updated to the use of an electric chair.
  • In the Scrubs episode "My Occurrence", J.D. copes with Ben's diagnosis in a similar manner. In a later episode, "My Screw Up", Dr. Cox's denial of Ben's death is portrayed using the same plot device.

Music

  • It inspired The Doobie Brothers song "I Cheat The Hangman".
  • In rapper DMX's song "ATF" on It's Dark and Hell Is Hot, ATF agents are at the door, ready to raid his apartment. Following the tale of an elaborate escape and shootout, it is revealed that the last thing he hears is the ATF at the door.

Other media

  • In the manga version of Battle Royale, Hirono Shimizu's final thoughts, as she drowns in a well, are reminiscent of this story.
  • The comic book The Punisher: Born features the same plot device.
  • The music video for the song "A Secret Place" by the thrash metal band Megadeth

References

  1. ^ http://es.wikisource.org/wiki/Conde_Lucanor:Ejemplo_11
  2. ^ 2005, Kurt Vonnegut, Daniel Simon, A man without a country, p 7
  3. ^ http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/Issue_8/thain.html#up20
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=An_Occurrence_at_Owl_Creek_Bridge&oldid=326215028"