AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE
by Ambrose Bierce, 1891

In spite of the fact that "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" seems merely a trick to shock the reader, Ambrose Bierce's tale of the man who imagines that he has escaped hanging in the moment before he comes to the end of his rope is one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature. The story is primarily a tour de force of technique in which the content is merely a pretext for a game Bierce plays with the conventions of narrative time and fictional endings. Collected in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, the story depicts the human need to escape death. The theme is established by Bierce in the only way it can be, by means of the imagination, a truth that Bierce develops through an elaborate bit of fiction making that the reader initially takes to be actuality.

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is made up of three sections that correspond to the basic fictional elements of static scene, exposition, and action. All three are presented in such an ironic way that they are undermined. Although the first part of the story is the only one in which something actually happens, it seems as static and dead as a still picture. The second part, which seems to exist to provide realistic motivation for the protagonist's dilemma, is more important for providing aesthetic motivation for the story's manipulation of narrative time. Although the third part is an exciting chase sequence that seems to be happening in the physical world, it actually is a psychic event taking place only in the mind of the protagonist.

Bierce cues the reader in on the fictional nature of his story at the crucial moment when Farquhar falls beneath the railway cross ties. Standing on the brink of death, he thinks hypothetically, "If I could free my hands … I might throw off my noose and spring into the stream." Bierce notes, "As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it, the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside."

This is the central passage in Bierce's tale, for it is actually a self-reflexive reference to the story itself, calling attention to the most notorious characteristic of fiction—the impossibility of escaping time. It is a reminder that, in spite of the author's desire to communicate that which is instantaneous or timeless, the reader is trapped by the time-bound nature of words that can only be processed one after another. It is only because of the time-bound nature of discourse that Farquhar's imaginative invention of his escape makes the reader believe that it is taking place in reality.

Although at the end of the story the reader may feel tricked, Bierce actually plays quite fairly, providing a number of clues throughout the last section to indicate that what the reader thinks is happening is not really happening at all. For example, the words used to describe Farquhar's feelings as he falls into the water suggest an illusory experience, as agonies "seemed" to shoot through him and pains "appeared" to flash along well-defined lines. When he comes to the surface, his senses seem so "preternaturally keen and alert" that he can see the veins of leaves and the dewdrops on blades of grass on the shore. Against all odds, after escaping from the hangman's noose, he escapes from drowning and from the fire of Federal rifles and cannon. Finally, on the way home he passes through an unfamiliar and uninhabited region that surprises him with its wildness, and he looks up at stars grouped in strange constellations that seem to have a secret and malign significance. It is only the reader's sympathetic involvement with the reality of Farquhar's escape that allows him or her to ignore such obvious unrealities.

At the conclusion of the story, when Farquhar reaches home, he sees his wife and springs forward to greet her with extended arms. At this point the verb tense of the account abruptly shifts from the present to the past tense as he feels a stunning blow on the back of his neck and all is darkness and silence: "Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek Bridge."

Although Ambrose Bierce has at times been scorned as a mere sensationalist, he has belatedly gained the attention he deserves. He is a serious writer with a profound understanding of the psychological nature of reality and a shrewd awareness of the complexities of narrative. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is not a cheap trick but rather a sophisticated model of Bierce's mastery of short fiction.

—Charles E. May