An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge Analysis
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" or "A Dead Man's Dream" is a short story by American author Ambrose Bierce. Originally published by 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. Bierce's abandonment of strict linear narration in favor of the internal mind of the protagonist is considered an early example of experimentation with stream of consciousness.[1] It is Bierce's most anthologized story.[2]
Contents [hide]
1 Plot summary
2 Stories with similar structure
3 Adaptations
4 Influence
5 Notes
6 References
7 External links
Plot summary[edit]
Peyton Farquhar, a plantation owner in his mid-thirties, is being prepared for execution by hanging from an Alabama railroad bridge during the American Civil War. Six military men and a company of infantrymen are present, guarding the bridge and carrying out the sentence. Farquhar thinks of his wife and children and is then distracted by a noise that, to him, sounds like an unbearably loud clanging; it is actually the ticking of his watch. He considers the possibility of jumping off the bridge and swimming to safety if he can free his tied hands, but the soldiers drop him from the bridge before he can act on the idea.
In a flashback, Farquhar and his wife are relaxing at home one evening when a soldier rides up to …show more content…
the gate. Farquhar, a supporter of the Confederacy, learns from him that Union troops have seized the Owl Creek railroad bridge and repaired it. The soldier suggests that Farquhar might be able to burn the bridge down if he can slip past its guards. He then leaves, but doubles back after nightfall to return north the way he came. The soldier is actually a disguised Union scout who has lured Farquhar into a trap, as any civilian caught interfering with the railroads will be hanged.
The story returns to the present, and the rope around Farquhar's neck breaks when he falls from the bridge into the creek. He frees his hands, pulls the noose away, and surfaces to begin his escape. His senses now greatly sharpened, he dives and swims downstream to avoid rifle and cannon fire. Once he is out of range, he leaves the creek to begin the journey to his home, 30 miles away. Farquhar walks all day long through a seemingly endless forest, and that night he begins to hallucinate seeing strange constellations and hearing whispered voices in an unknown language. He travels on, urged by the thought of his wife and children despite the pains caused by his ordeal. The next morning, after having apparently fallen asleep while walking, he finds himself at the gate to his plantation. He rushes to embrace his wife, but before he can do so, he feels a heavy blow upon the back of his neck; there is a loud noise and a flash of white, 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 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.[3] An early literary antecedent appears in Don Juan Manuel's Tales of Count Lucanor, Chapter XII (c 1335), "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.[4] This story was rewritten by Jorge Luis Borges in "The Wizard Postponed", in his book A Universal History of Infamy (1935).[5] Charles Dickens' essay "A Visit to Newgate" wherein a man dreams he has escaped his death sentence is another possible source for the story.[6] A similar hallucination of a year of subjective time passing at the moment of death occurs in Borges' short story "The Secret Miracle" (1944). 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.[7][8] A particularly strong inspiration for the 1990 film Jacob's Ladder, for both Bruce Joel Rubin and Adrian Lyne, was Robert Enrico's 1962 short film An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,[9] one of Lyne's favourite movies.[10] "The Shot", an episode of the 1997 anthology series Gun, has a similar concept.
Critic James F.
Maxfield suggested that the Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo (1958) could be interpreted as a variant on "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", and that the main narrative of the film is actually imagined by the protagonist, who is left dangling from a building at the end of the film's first scene. This theory is supported by the fact that the first draft of the Vertigo script written by co-screenwriter Samuel A. Taylor is entitled "From among the Dead, or There'll Never Be Another You, by Samuel Taylor and Ambrose
Bierce".[11]
The end of the film Brazil (1985) would appear to follow this structure as well.
Adaptations[edit]
Contents [hide]
1 Plot summary
2 Stories with similar structure
3 Adaptations
4 Influence
5 Notes
6 References
7 External links
Plot summary[edit]
Peyton Farquhar, a plantation owner in his mid-thirties, is being prepared for execution by hanging from an Alabama railroad bridge during the American Civil War. Six military men and a company of infantrymen are present, guarding the bridge and carrying out the sentence. Farquhar thinks of his wife and children and is then distracted by a noise that, to him, sounds like an unbearably loud clanging; it is actually the ticking of his watch. He considers the possibility of jumping off the bridge and swimming to safety if he can free his tied hands, but the soldiers drop him from the bridge before he can act on the idea.
In a flashback, Farquhar and his wife are relaxing at home one evening when a soldier rides up to …show more content…
the gate. Farquhar, a supporter of the Confederacy, learns from him that Union troops have seized the Owl Creek railroad bridge and repaired it. The soldier suggests that Farquhar might be able to burn the bridge down if he can slip past its guards. He then leaves, but doubles back after nightfall to return north the way he came. The soldier is actually a disguised Union scout who has lured Farquhar into a trap, as any civilian caught interfering with the railroads will be hanged.
The story returns to the present, and the rope around Farquhar's neck breaks when he falls from the bridge into the creek. He frees his hands, pulls the noose away, and surfaces to begin his escape. His senses now greatly sharpened, he dives and swims downstream to avoid rifle and cannon fire. Once he is out of range, he leaves the creek to begin the journey to his home, 30 miles away. Farquhar walks all day long through a seemingly endless forest, and that night he begins to hallucinate seeing strange constellations and hearing whispered voices in an unknown language. He travels on, urged by the thought of his wife and children despite the pains caused by his ordeal. The next morning, after having apparently fallen asleep while walking, he finds himself at the gate to his plantation. He rushes to embrace his wife, but before he can do so, he feels a heavy blow upon the back of his neck; there is a loud noise and a flash of white, 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 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.[3] An early literary antecedent appears in Don Juan Manuel's Tales of Count Lucanor, Chapter XII (c 1335), "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.[4] This story was rewritten by Jorge Luis Borges in "The Wizard Postponed", in his book A Universal History of Infamy (1935).[5] Charles Dickens' essay "A Visit to Newgate" wherein a man dreams he has escaped his death sentence is another possible source for the story.[6] A similar hallucination of a year of subjective time passing at the moment of death occurs in Borges' short story "The Secret Miracle" (1944). 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.[7][8] A particularly strong inspiration for the 1990 film Jacob's Ladder, for both Bruce Joel Rubin and Adrian Lyne, was Robert Enrico's 1962 short film An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,[9] one of Lyne's favourite movies.[10] "The Shot", an episode of the 1997 anthology series Gun, has a similar concept.
Critic James F.
Maxfield suggested that the Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo (1958) could be interpreted as a variant on "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", and that the main narrative of the film is actually imagined by the protagonist, who is left dangling from a building at the end of the film's first scene. This theory is supported by the fact that the first draft of the Vertigo script written by co-screenwriter Samuel A. Taylor is entitled "From among the Dead, or There'll Never Be Another You, by Samuel Taylor and Ambrose
Bierce".[11]
The end of the film Brazil (1985) would appear to follow this structure as well.
Adaptations[edit]