An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
Short story by Ambrose Bierce
Country	USA
Language	English
Genre(s)	short story
Publication
Published in	Tales of Soldiers and Civilians
Publication date	1890

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 anthologized in Bierce's 1891 collection, 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 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 farther and farther 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 planter in his 30s. He lives in the South and is a major Confederate supporter, even though he is not even in the military. 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 had set up, to which the soldier tells him 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, who 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, hear unusual noises from the wood, and believes he has fallen asleep while walking. He wakes up to see his home, with his beautiful 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.

Adaptations

At least four film adaptations of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" have been produced.

A silent movie made in 1929 titled The Spy.

A TV version of this story was telecast in 1959 during the 5th season of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV anthology series starring Ronald Howard, the son of Leslie Howard.

A French version called La Rivière du Hibou, directed by Robert Enrico and produced by Marcel Ichac and Paul de Roubaix, was released in 1962. Filmed in black and white, it later went on to win the award for best short subject at the 1962 Cannes film festival and 1963 Academy Awards. In 1964 La Rivière du Hibou aired on American television as an episode of the anthology series The Twilight Zone. See An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (film).

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.

Several radio series adapted the story for broadcast, including Escape in 1947, Suspense in 1959, and CBS Radio Mystery Theater in the 1970s.

References in literature and popular culture

Flan 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 as Bierce's story, and Golding admits the similarity in an afterword to the novel.
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.
David Lynch's movie Lost Highway is thought to be based on this story as well.
Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, Terry Gilliam's Brazil, M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense and Richard Linklater's Waking Life, are also very similar in regard to the specific plot twist at the ends of each of the works.
The 1962 film Carnival of Souls, the 1990 psychological horror film Jacob's Ladder, and the 2005 film Stay were inspired by "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (the first film and the third took place on a bridge), along with countless others.
Richard Kelly, the director of Donnie Darko has said it was an inspiration for his film.
Lucille Fletcher used a similar plot for her story "The Hitch-hiker", which was itself adapted as a memorable episode of television's The Twilight Zone.
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".
In 2006, Bierce's story was referenced on an episode of the ABC television series Lost entitled "The Long Con".
At the end of "My Occurrence", an episode of the TV series Scrubs, it becomes apparent that the lead character has imagined many of the events of the episode as he does not want to believe that a friend has cancer.
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.
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.
This short story is in the Language and Literature section of the 2007 Academic Decathlon curriculum.
It also inspired The Doobie Brothers song "I Cheat The Hangman".
Quantum immortality is a science fiction and philosophical concept that speculates that conscious observers cannot die, given the existence of parallel universes. Their subjective experience may become increasingly absurd, however. Quantum_suicide_and_quantum_immortality_in_fiction

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