A Semiotic Analysis: an Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Michael Widmer
MDIA 4400
03/04/2013
A Semiotic Analysis: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is a short story set during the American Civil War by author Ambrose Pierce. That was later adapted into a short film by director Robert Enrico and became an episode of The Twilight Zone in 1963. Enrico used dialogue and voice-over sparingly, and relied heavily on the rural landscape, and how it transformed through war and the psychological state of the protagonist Peyton Farquhar, to convey his ideas. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge has an enormous amount of semiotic analysis in the short film. Just in the beginning of the film we see this through the sign on the tree, the Owl Creek Bridge itself and the driftwood.
Our first sign of semiotics in the film we see a sign nailed to a tree stating, “ORDER ANY CIVILIAN caught interfering with the railroad, bridges, or trails will be SUMMARILY HANGED, The 4th of April 1862 (Enrico, 1968).” This gives us the timeframe and setting showing us that it’s during the Civil War in Northern, Alabama. This also shows us that our protagonist is an insurgent of war. They don’t tell us in this installment what actions he did to put him in this predicament, but we eventually end up discovering this later in Ambrose’s stories actually tells us why he is about to be hanged. One of the next important scenes is the bridge scene that Farquhar is about to be hanged from.
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man 's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners, two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may
MDIA 4400
03/04/2013
A Semiotic Analysis: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is a short story set during the American Civil War by author Ambrose Pierce. That was later adapted into a short film by director Robert Enrico and became an episode of The Twilight Zone in 1963. Enrico used dialogue and voice-over sparingly, and relied heavily on the rural landscape, and how it transformed through war and the psychological state of the protagonist Peyton Farquhar, to convey his ideas. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge has an enormous amount of semiotic analysis in the short film. Just in the beginning of the film we see this through the sign on the tree, the Owl Creek Bridge itself and the driftwood.
Our first sign of semiotics in the film we see a sign nailed to a tree stating, “ORDER ANY CIVILIAN caught interfering with the railroad, bridges, or trails will be SUMMARILY HANGED, The 4th of April 1862 (Enrico, 1968).” This gives us the timeframe and setting showing us that it’s during the Civil War in Northern, Alabama. This also shows us that our protagonist is an insurgent of war. They don’t tell us in this installment what actions he did to put him in this predicament, but we eventually end up discovering this later in Ambrose’s stories actually tells us why he is about to be hanged. One of the next important scenes is the bridge scene that Farquhar is about to be hanged from.
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man 's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners, two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may
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