Category: An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge

Some people say they have dreams that feet like it are real. Make sure that you don’t have any typos. There is always a gap between reality and illusion. That is exactly what Peyton Farquhar did in the short story, “ An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge”, by Ambrose Bierce. Throughout the story, Bierce uses examples of foreshadowing, preternatural plot elements and imagery.

In the short story “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce.fragment The first thing Bierce uses is foreshadowing throughout this short story. He states “ Keen, poignant agonies [seemes] to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of his body and limbs. These pains [appears] to flash along well [define] lines of ramifications and a beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity ”(14). This is a part of foreshadowing. Bierce is dropping hints to the reader that Peyton is feeling completely what a person being hunghanged feels like.

The next thing he uses is the preternatural plot element. For example in this quote “ His neck [is] in pain and lifting his hand to it found it horribly swollen. He [knows] that it had a circle of black where the rope had [bruise] it. His eyes felt [congest]; he [can] no longer close them ’’ (18). Farquhar does not know his neck is swollen by the rope that he is hanging on. He believes that this happens when he gets loose from it. The author Bierce uses preternatural plot elements to catch the reader’s attention. He does this because as a reader they know what’s the reader knows what is going ongoing with Peyton’s neck and he does not.

Lastly, Bierce makes use of a lot of imagery at the end of his story. “ As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon – then all is darkness and silence! ” ( Bierce 19). As Peyton is hanging he thinks about all of his thoughts and feelings to the time of his death. Bierce is using tactile, visual, and olfactory imagery in the quote. He uses tactility to show how Peyton Farquhar feels a blow on the back of his neck. He uses visual and olfactory imagery by showing the reader what he sees and what he hears as Farquhar passes.

Throughout the story, Bierce uses examples of foreshadowing, preternatural plot elements and imagery. He uses these techniques throughout the ending of the story to keep his readers guessing. This is why Ambrose Bierce ending comes as a shock. He utilize his technique to come up with that surprising ending.

Within Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, time is the main component in which the plot finds itself revolving around itself. Time itself is shaded behind a thin veil, in which what is real and what is fake can not be distinguished. Perceived time is the cornerstone within this story, and with this the idea of an entire escape happens in a mere cloud of death. Time within “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, plays a major role in the realistic and surrealistic events that occur.

Peyton Farquhar finds himself among the Union soldiers after being given a tip about the manageable ways to sneak into Owl Creek Bridge. But, how did he manage to get here, hanging from a bridge, staring at the water below? It all starts with his devotion to the southern cause. During which, southern pride was key during the Civil War. Peyton merely goes to the bridge in order to destroy it to aid his fellow Confederates in their fight for independence from the north. But, this charade, rather this fatal attempt to destroy the bridge leaves Peyton Farquhar hanging above Owl Creek.

He falls, and this begins his narrow escape from Union officers with only intent to kill him for treason. As soon as he awakes, he feels a “sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of his body and limbs.” (Bierce, Page 14). He feels the pain of death, but yet feels alive at the same time, employing an oxymoron which shows the distant point of view of the narrator. Time is directly correlated with the point of view used within the story. The narrator is using a third person limited point of view, in which is perfect because we only know of Peyton Farquhar’s thoughts and his alone, so we only see his perception of time, cleverly shielding the true timeline of the current moment. As well as, no one else can influence the reader’s hope of Peyton’s survival because we only know his thoughts. Peyton’s direct characterization with him being round and dynamic, helps us to more fully relate and coerce with his character because of his fluid personality. “We see his hanging as harsh and unfair. Thus, we are disposed to hope that Farquhar will escape execution and are less likely to question the escape when it seems to happen.” (Samide). This point of view helps to further sympathize with Farquhar, and makes the story just all that believable.

Plot and time go hand and hand with one another. Plot also directly correlates with the setting, and with the setting the correlation of time finds headway. This story is directly set during the Civil War in American history in which we can be led to believe that this burning rivalry between the north and south could be entirely plausible. Therefore, this said rivalry sets the basis for this event of possibly occurring. Although, the Civil War​ “​often appears morally ambiguous…” Within this story, we are still aware of its happenings. (Samide). The time period as well could be the reason for Peyton’s supposed survival, because in the first challenge he faces with the gun fight of which it is said that the “ two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually”. (Bierce, Page 16) Guns of that age, were mostly “breech loading carbines that would be promoted in 1861, however they were mainly utilized and created through advancements in the previous century. They were loaded with linen or copper, or whatever ammunition could be used to fire.” (Bilby). Reportedly the 8th’s troopers of West Virginia said that they, “did the principal part of their fighting with their fists and butt ends of their guns…” because the carbines were inaccurate and “worthless” guns. The regiments leader, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Youart said that “the worthlessness of the…carbine with which my command is armed gready endangered my success”. It is safe to assume that the guns of this time would have been severely inaccurate and virtually unusable, clearly showing how time plays an important variable in Farquhar’s “survival”.

Throughout the story, the plot moves at a very fast pace, and there is a reason for this. During which the action occurs, since the plot moves so fast, there is no time to sit and process the event that occurred. Before we even have the chance to ponder his broken neck, we have to experience through the narrator’s eyes, Peyton’s struggle to save himself from drowning. After he untangles himself and rises above the water, he is thrown into a war of bullets and willpower, seemingly, he is miraculously escaping every bullet. We don’t stop to think about the events unfolding because of the point of view in which the story is told through. We only hear Farquhar’s thoughts so we know of his unending resolve to return to his family, which makes us sympathize with him even more. His death is timed within this story as well. After every major event that occurs, he explains his state, both mentally and physically. After he is “dropped” from the bridge he felt “like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fullness—of congestion.” (Bierce, Page 14). Throughout all the major events, the clear distinction of reality and falsehood is found through the pain Peyton feels as he moves through the stages of death. He then become tangled in the ropes and feels “on fire, his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish!” (Bierce, Page 15). His body is shutting down at a rapid pace, showing the only kind of reality to aid the story going on within. The story Peyton has painted in his head is the surreal aspect of the story that we want to believe. After the scene in which he is being shot at by the Union soldiers, he has aswollen neck, can’t close his eyes due to them being swollen and he was dehydrated; this bein the reality in his illusion of him about to reach his home to see his family.

It’s not until the end when we see “Peyton Fahrquhar… swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.” (Bierce, Page 19). This at the end is the twist in a sense, but this is the true reality. When we thought Peyton was on an adventure or journey for seemingly hours, days, weeks; he was in a cloud of death in which resulted in a whole journey occurring in mere seconds. His death was a result of the times, his story was a result of the clouded sense of death. Real and surreal moments occur within this story that happened in a mere few seconds, and we can see glimpses of the reality within the pain and trauma that Peyton feels. Time is the major player in one man’s hope for survival.

Works Cited

1. Bilby, Joseph G. “Cantankerous Cosmopolitan and Joslyn Carbines Proved That Yankee Ingenuity Sometimes Fell Short of the Mark.” ​America’s Civil War​, vol. 19, no. 6, Jan. 2007, pp. 19–20. ​EBSCOhost​, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=23129634&site=ehost-live.
2. Samide, Daniel E. ​Anatomy of a Classic: Ambrose Bierce Cleverly Used Some Key Literary Tools in Crafting His Civil War Tale ’An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge​. Kalmbach Publishing Co.
3. Bierce, Ambrose, and Sunand T. Joshi. ​The Devils Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs​. Library of America, 2011. Pages 10-19

An American author, poet, journalist, and Civil War veteran, Ambrose Bierce had a mix of romantic and realist writing in his time. His real-life experiences created darker themes for his writings and helped him detail precisely (“Ambrose Bierce”). His experiences aided his realistic craft, ideally configured in his most popular and well-known short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” The Devil’s Dictionary, a book written by Bierce, is one of ‘The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature’ by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration. Addition to his short stories and literature, he also completed volumes of poetry, making him a very skillful and diverse author.

Bierce is a neglected author and poet, hiding in the shadows of Stephen Crane and other war story authors. Unlike most, Bierce actually fought in the Union army. In 1861 he fought in a number of American Civil War battles, including Shiloh, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge (Nash, C. Charles). His actual war familiarity gives all 27 of his battle-related works the hint of authenticity and realness (Nash, C. Charles.). The effect that the war did on Bierce gives his stories a dark and more tenebrous feel for whenever read. His depiction of war is horrifying, senseless, almost supernatural. The horrific detail and realism to his writings has placed him next to Edgar Allen Poe’s writing (Mms. “Edgar Allen Poe..”). He helped polish the psychological idea for horror stories. In addition to his ghost and horror stories, he created multiple pieces of poetry which has become one of his most famous pieces called The Devil’s Dictionary (Nash, C. Charles). The piece originally started as small snippets in the daily newspaper but steadily became a volume of seven ranging from 1902 to 1912 (Ambrose Bierce Letters). Bierce’s literature became heavily inspiring as many well-known writers and scholars looked at his bias Naturalism as a quality of satire and contempt for humanity. Stephen Crane looks to his work for his experimental and detailed war stories, H. P. Lovecraft sees his work as unforetold and grim, even going as far to say that Bierce’s craft is the shine of horror and is great examples of the supernatural. A literary critic William Dean Howell commented on Bierce and said, “Mr. Bierce is amongst one of our best three writers.” To which, he replied to Howell saying, “I am sure Mr. Howell is the other two.”

Ambrose Bierce ended up heightening his fame another way also. In 1913, Bierce took a trip that would change his future forever (Ambrose Bierce Letters Project). In the cold months of October through December, the seventy-one-year-old man traveled across several states and into Mexico to cover the old civil war grounds only to go missing. Last known to be traveling with the Villa’s army as far as Chihuahua. Bierce fell off the face of the earth with little to none traces of him. His last known method of communication before his disappearance was supposedly a letter, he had written to a close friend known as Blanche Partington. His disappearance has become one of the most famous literary disappearances ever and many tales and stories have been created in attempts to let his name live on. His disappearance has been given many wild heart racing stories of him dying in one last battle, whereas others are simple stories of his demise, saying he died from asthma (Nash, C. Charles). Multiply people came to investigate the American author’s disappearance but sadly came up with nothing. The original evidence of the final letter was said to be destroyed and only evidence of the letter’s existence was recorded in Carrie Christiansen’s summary report. All investigations were proven fruitless and no hard evidence of his disappearance turned up, leaving the disappearance of Ambrose Bierce shrouded in mystery.

Bierce left his mark on America for sure. His works inspired many such as Ernest Hemingway, Stephen Crane, and many more. His horror fiction was ranked beside Edgar Allen Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. More than fifty novels, movies, magazine clips, short stories, poems comic books, plays and shows have been based about him. Bierce’s work was transformed into so much more than it was. Short films, television shows and movies were created after his works. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” had been portrayed and filmed three different times. About two versions of his own “Eyes of the Panther” was released, both classic short films. Even Bierce’s own character was featured and inspired in other films and books. Many believed that if it were not for the war then Bierce would have never become the successful writer and man he was. Bierce’s stories, life and disappearances all became an inspiring act for others and helped create a world of mystery and horror around his name. Ambrose Bierce became a popular and well-liked man for his horrific outtake on the war and his shallow skill of putting it into words, creating his very own well-liked style of vague yet powerful literature.

As a realist author, poet, Civil War veteran, and journalist, Ambrose Bierce disappeared from the earth with a heavy mark left. His writings had inspired many comrades in the literature world and realistic and detailed writing made him a popular English choice. With his real-life experiences leading to the start of his adventures in writing, they also lead to the end. Bierce impacted American greatly and helped making a literary change forever.

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce gives an interesting, yet disturbing theme of illusion versus reality. This theme intrigues me more than the other short stories that I have read. The story has a simple plot of a man during the American Civil War about to be executed, but the shock end is what makes the work truly shine, not to mention deeper meanings behind the text. The work also contains detailed descriptions of the setting and various scenes that occur throughout the story.

Ambrose Bierce starts the story off by having the protagonist stand on a bridge with a noose around his neck. This hook at the beginning is sure to grab a reader’s attention. Surrounding the protagonist are the Union soldiers that are preparing his execution. Bierce describes just about everything that is going on at the bridge. He writes about each Union soldier and what they are doing during this intense moment. Bierce also tells of what is around the men, such as the railroad, an outpost, and a bunch of vertical trees. Details make a story much more vivid.

The protagonist is minutes away from death. He starts to hear sharp noises that get progressively longer and louder. The protagonist finds out that the noises are the ticks of his watch. I believe this is an important event in the story because the protagonist is at his final moments. The ticks get slower, which shows that time is slowing. It is a frightening moment for him, and it is almost as if he is desperate to avoid death by trying to make time slowdown in his thoughts. This is the first instance of illusion versus reality.

The story then cuts to a time before the execution. A man by the name of Peyton Farquhar is introduced in the work. He is a planter, a politician, and a patriot to the Southern cause. Peyton and his wife encounter a soldier in a confederate uniform. The soldier tells Peyton about an opportunity to burn the Owl Creek Bridge to hinder the Union advance. Peyton is eager to carry the plan into motion, but what he did not know is that the confederate soldier is actually a Union scout. Now it is known that Peyton is the protagonist.

The plot goes back to the bridge. The sergeant steps off the plank, and Peyton falls. Miraculously, the rope breaks, and Peyton crashes into the river. He is now swimming away from the Union soldiers that are firing at him. This is when Bierce goes into more detail. Peyton can see the veins of leaves and the insects that are on them. He can hear the flaps of wings and the spiders in the water. Peyton could even see the gray eye of the sniper on the bridge. His senses are strong to the point that they are unreal.

After evading more gunfire, Peyton lands on the gravel at the foot of the stream. He is happy to see the sand, as if he saw jewels. The trees were like garden plants with a blooming fragrance. Peyton escapes death, and starts to value life far more than he did before. However, the Union is still on his trail. Peyton’s journey is not over yet.

After traveling a good distance, Peyton is fatigued. He finally arrives home, where his wife is waiting for him. Filled with joy, Peyton runs to his wife with his arms out. Right before he can clasp her, he feels an agonizing pain in his neck. Peyton is executed at the Owl Creek Bridge. Everything that happened after the Peyton fell of the bridge was in his imagination. A second, more powerful instance of illusion versus reality.

Illusion plays a major role in this story. Peyton was desperate to survive, and the best thing he could do was imagine his escape. As much as he could dream, reality still ended his life. Illusion and reality are the same way in real life. People try to escape reality for as long as they can until they must act. Therefore, I believe this story is the best out of the others that I have read. A twisted theme that can be relatable has a major impact on just about everyone. Ambrose Bierce did a fantastic job implementing this concept of illusion and reality into his work.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is a short story that has revolved around several themes throughout the book. The purpose of the themes is to bring out different meanings and to make the reader a better understanding of the book. He has also used different literary devices to complete his works. Some of the themes that he has used are; the fluid nature of time, and the blurred line between reality and illusion.

It is also suspicious because of the memory success, setting, and use of Peyton’s senses. Throughout the sequence of events, the use of flashbacks describes how Peyton Farquhar lived before he was caught disrupting a bridge. As the story describes Peyton’s life and work, they refer to him as a good investor and a devoted slave owner in the South. It creates suspicion in this part of the story because a soldier comes to their house asking for drinking water. The military tells Peyton, ‘The Yanks are repairing the railway… any citizen who is caught disturbing the railway line, its bridges, tunnels or trains will be suspended’. Knowing that this soldier is a Federal spy from the north and Peyton is the owner of Southern Plantation, raises doubts because these two people have completely different views of what is right.

Standing on the plank, over the bridge he hears a sound, “striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith’s hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality”. His senses begin to broaden. As Peyton falls into the water, his senses are awakened as he comes to the surface and feels the “ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they stuck”

The fluid nature of time

The first theme is about the fluid nature of time, it is discussing and focuses on the fluid nature of time. The story structure moves from the present to the past, and to what is revealed to be the imagined present or what was foreseen in the past. The structure of the story, which moves from the present to the past, which appears as the imagined present, reflects this fluidity as well as the tension that exists between competing notions of time. This setting has taken place in a forest and has also provided a major part of a sequence that shows a particular sequence in the story. As Peyton is on his deathbed he checks around to see if there is someone but “nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view”(531). He also feels that his life is over and then “He looked a moment at his “unsteady-fast footing”, then let his gaze wander to the swirling water” (531).

The second section interrupts what appears at first to be a continuous flow of execution taking place in the present moment. Perched on the edge of the bridge, Farquhar closes his eyes, a gesture of sliding into his own version of reality, free of any responsibility towards the laws of time. As the ticking of his clock slows down and more time elapses between strokes, Farquhar moves into a timeless realm. When Farquhar imagines himself sliding into the water, Bears compares him to a ‘giant pendulum’ that is spinning wildly out of control.

Here Farquhar moves into a transitional space that is neither life nor death, but a disjointed consciousness in the world with its own rules. In the brief window of time between the officer descending from the throne and Farquhar’s actual death, time slows down and turns to accommodate a comfortable vision of Farquhar’s safe return to his family. Despite Farquhar’s manipulation of the times, he cannot escape reality. Whether he lives a few moments or more, death eventually claims him. It is futile to try to divert time at will. One of the most notable aspects of ‘An Incident at the Owl Creek Bridge’ is Byers’ realistic rendering of Farquhar’s alternative concept of time, which suggests that the nature of time is somewhat subjective.

The blurred line between reality and illusion.

Reality and illusion work side by side in ‘An Incident at Owl Creek Bridge’ and towards the end of the story, we are not aware of any division between them and Farquhar’s illusion is a reality for us, as readers. Farquhar creates his fictional world out of desperation: he is about to die, and imagining his escape is a way of gaining control over the facts of his current situation. His mind supplies the flight and successful escape that his body cannot achieve on its own. In the second section, when we learn what brought Farquhar to this moment, this hybrid world of the real and the fantastic appears in the figure of the Northern Scout.

Dressed in the gray of a Confederate soldier, he presents one version of the truth while actually embodying the other reality and illusion are blurred. By the time the fantasy world of the third volume is in full swing, we are completely immersed in Farquhar’s illusion, which has become reality for both him and us. It is meaningless to try to separate one from the other. Just as Farquhar’s belief that the Northern Scout is in fact a Confederate soldier leads him to the death penalty, his belief that he is surviving can have only one consequence: the reality of his death.

Apart from using themes to show that His work was successful, the author also used some poetic devices like imagery and symbolism to add some taste to his writing. Some of the symbols that he used in his book are listed below.

Driftwood

Driftwood, as it makes its way to the bottom, symbolizes both Farquhar’s unattainable freedom and Farquhar’s as he begins to imagine his own escape in the water. At first, Driftwood distracts Farquhar from thoughts of his wife and children. Later, it becomes an extension of Farquhar himself, as Farquhar imagines himself floating in the water as if it were driftwood. Driftwood also points to Farquhar’s distorted understanding of the times. As he looks down, he sees the water ‘running madly’ under him, then ‘dancing’ driftwood. He is amazed at how slow it is suddenly moving in a ‘sluggish’ stream. This sudden change in his perception marks Farquhar’s transition from reality to fiction. From then on, he takes liberties with the details of his story and supplies the ending he wants: a brave escape rather than execution for being a war criminal. Ironically, although he sees himself as Driftwood, it is Driftwood that occupied him in the first place. When Farquhar initially encounters the undercover northern scout, the scout advises Farquhar to set fire to the pieces of wood that the winter floods washed away at the base of the bridge. Driftwood thus serves as his means of undoing such that it ultimately represents unattainable freedom.

Owl Creek Bridge

The Owl Creek Bridge symbolizes the connections and transitions. The bridge was destroyed by Confederate forces or sympathizers in an attempt to prevent the North from advancing deep into enemy territory. With the vital artery restored by Union forces, the North’s war effort once again gained momentum in northern Alabama, leading to the final defeat of the Union and an end to the Civil War. Ironically, the target of Farquhar’s sabotage attempt becomes the stage on which his execution is staged. By breaking the bridge, Farquhar was attempting to destroy order and connection by fantasizing about separating himself from his physical body, in the final moments of his life. The bridge serves as an intermediary, joining opposite banks of the creek it is neither one side nor the other, but a connection between them. Similarly, the bridge connects life and death for Farquhar. As Farquhar ‘escapes’ in the water, the bridge is a symbol of a transitional psychological space between fantasy and reality.

As Peyton glances over his shoulder he looks straight into the barrel of the musket from a distance where a “normal” person would not be able to see it from. From the front gate of his house, “he sees a flutter of female garments…as he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck” Throughout this short story, there has been a lot of suspense and also the use of Peyton’s senses. The story has built up all of the suspense and also through these major points it has revealed the secrets. As Peyton is waiting to be hanged, the thoughts that run through his mind are changes to dreams. This starts the chaos of his “escape.” Due to his evasion, we as the readers are attached to the story only to find out Peyton is dreaming and then dies.

References

1. Bierce, Ambrose. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing, 2019.
2. Ames, Clifford R. ‘Do I Wake or Sleep? Technique as Content in Ambrose Bierce’s Short Story,’ An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’.’ American literary realism, 1870-1910 19.3 (1987): 52-67.
3. Powers, James G. ‘Freud and Farquhar: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge?.’ Studies in Short Fiction 19.3 (1982): 278.
4. Bierce, Ambrose. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Vol. 1. Library of Alexandria, 1948.