“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”
I
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lots of DESCRIPTION
execution by hanging
wooden railroad bridge
northern Alabama
2 privates, 1 sergeant, 1 captain, 2 sentinels at end
Military:
o the 2 sentinels did not know what was about to happen; not their duty
Foreshadowing: “nobody was in sight….The other bank of the stream was
open ground” (hope of escape)
stockade, canon, spectators
Foreshadowing: canon
motionlessness – nobody moving, statue-like
“Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of
respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are
forms of deference.”
Military:
o military etiquette
o familiar w/Death, killing
Peyton Farquhar:
o still unnamed
o 35
o civilian
o planter
o nice guy – WHY is he being hanged?? (begs question)
Military:
o “The liberal military code makes provisions for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen
are not excluded.”
o sardonic tone
o kill anybody
“preparations” = complete
PF & sergeant at opposite ends of a plank
driftwood:
o catches PF’s eye
o stream = swift BUT seems slow to PF
Foreshadowing:
o water seems slow – everything slows down
o driftwood =
 down the stream – eyes, then mind - escape
 why he’s being hanged
o sun off the stream
o mists down stream
can’t focus:
o wants his last thoughts to be @ wife & children
o soldiers, fort, driftwood, mists, sun – “all had distracted him”
new distraction = banging
o “sharp, distinct, metallic percussion”
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o like a “death knell”
o = “the ticking of his watch”
Foreshadowing:
o everything slows down
 like the water seems slow –
o ticking of his watch
o “intervals of silence”
o heightened senses
WISH:
o “If I could free my hands,” he thought, “I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By
diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and
get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still
beyond the invader's farthest advance.”
II
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Peyton Farquhar:
o still unnamed
o 35
o civilian
o planter
o gentleman
o successful farmer
o from “an old & highly respected Alabama family”
o slave owner
o secessionist
o ardent supporter of the South
o can’t fight (“Circumstances of an imperious nature”)
 (impotence of feeling)
 “he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the
larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction”
o BUT does what he can to help the cause
o civilian who at heart = soldier
o frequented the soldiers’ camps (told later)
 attended hangings?
 “student of hangings”
 lieutenant’s “ready, aim, fire”
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Narrator = pro-South:
o “from taking service with that gallant army which had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with
the fall of Corinth”
Narrator = anti-WAR:
o “the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war”
“one evening”
on porch w/ wife, “Confederate” soldier on horseback
o described as “gray-clad soldier” NOT “Confederate soldier”
o asked for drink of water
o wife = “only too happy to serve him with her own hands”
 dedicated, like PF, to the Southern cause
 OR
 sexual, wants a “real” man (see impotence above)
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news from the front
o Yanks = repairing railroads, reached OCB
o ORDER:
 “The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any
civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels, or trains will be
summarily hanged.”
 the reason PF = hanged
o 30 miles to OCB
PF = planning:
o 30 miles to OCB
o asks what “a civilian” could do to sabotage the bridge
SET UP:
o soldier = “Federal scout”
o Union army in disguise
o to dupe, con, swindle, deceive Southerner
 “all’s fair in love & war”
o soldier’s trick:
 to burn driftwood
 from last winter’s flood
III
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hanging
o lost consciousness, as if already dead, awakes from this state
Foreshadowing:
o “as one already dead”
o awakened what seemed “ages later”
no thinking – ALL feeling
o feeling = PAIN
swinging
falling into water
o feels like he’s drowning – still has the noose tightly around his neck
 noose = good thing – stops him from drowning
o sinks
o then rises
Irony:
o “To die of hanging at the bottom of a river!”
o “To be hanged and drowned," he thought, "that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I
will not be shot; that is not fair.”
(hints)
o “all was cold & dark” when he fell into the “water”
o “superhuman strength” to free his hands
frees hands
undoes noose  terrible pain, brain on fire, heart pounding
“shriek” for air
heightened senses – sights & sounds
o “preternaturally keen & alert”
o ripples on water
o trees, leaves, veins on leaves, bugs on leaves
o insects, locusts, spiders
o colors in dewdrops
o hum of gnats
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o beating of dragonflies
 sounds = music (MUSIC #1)
 music = beauty of nature
spun 180 degrees back to bridge
sentinels shooting
o somehow missed (hint)
spun around again
lieutenant shouting orders
o Military:
 “…the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the lieutenant on
shore was taking a part in the morning's work. How coldly and pitilessly--with what an even,
calm intonation, presaging, and enforcing tranquility in the men--with what accurately
measured interval fell those cruel words: ‘Company! . . . Attention! . . . Shoulder arms! . . .
Ready!. . . Aim! . . . Fire!’”
more shots – PF dives again – comes up far down stream
swimming w/the current – fast (while they reload)
thought & motion = fast
canon  big splash, missed into trees
spinning like a top
southern bank
o everything’s beautiful
 soil, leaves
 fragrant blooms
 Aeolian harp
 (MUSIC #2)
 (afterlife, Elysian Fields)
so beautiful he wanted to stay BUT grapeshot
o “roused him from his dream” (hint)
forest
o “He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the
revelation.”
 “the uncanny” = familiar yet foreign
 Cognitive Dissonance ?? (attracted yet repulsed)
o seeing things for the 1st time
 slowing down
 sharpened senses
 beauty of Nature
 music x2
 beauty of soil
 wild forest
 beauty of his wife
runs through the day until the night
(30 miles from OCB to home)
“fatigued, footsore, famishing”
now everything = strange
o familiar
o yet no one around
o road = untraveled, uninhabited
o “strange constellations”
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o “whispers in an unknown tongue”
pain in neck, bulging eyes, thirst
sleepwalking
HOME
morning, wife waiting w/open arms
realizes how beautiful she is
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SURPRISE END:
o “He springs forwards with extended arms. 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!
o Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath
the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.”
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(real hanging)
o lost consciousness
o feeling of suffocation
o no thinking, only pain
o swinging
o light fades away (not falling in to water)
o horrible neck pain, brain on fire, heart pounding (when removed the noose)
o blinded by “sunlight”
o heightened senses
o spinning around (in “water”)
o shots = creek of rope or creek of boards??
o canon = pounding of his heart??
o canon splashed wave that “strangled him”
o canon missed  smashed into trees that “cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond”
o “spinning like a top”
o sees “streaks of color”, instead of shapes
o strangeness = crossing over?? soldiers at a distance (dying)
o pain: “His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a
circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them.
His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his
teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue--he could no longer
feel the roadway beneath his feet!”
Reading/Video @ < http://www.adamsmithacademy.org/Occurrence_at_Owl_Creek_Bridge.html >
Twilight Zone episode @ < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jLxlyTrAC4 > (3 parts, 30 minutes)
STYLE:
 journalistic, objective
o Part I seems like a newspaper article
 BUT
 subtle tone = sardonic, cynical, ironic
o see themes @ war, military
o ending
o see beauty only at the end
o irony: “The man engaged to be hanged” suggests that he = participant in the hanging
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 & PF is responsible, partly
 like Hulga (“Good Country People”), his own ego/pride ensnares him in a transparent trap
POV = limited omniscient
o sees into PF but not the other characters
o most of Part III = from PF perspective, 3rd person
o most of Part I = objective, detached reporter
Flashback:
o Part II
o who PF is
o why PF = being hanged
Foreshadowing:
o several parts throughout
GOTHIC:
o grotesque plot
 hanging, death knell, blacksmith
o gloom, darkness?
o supernatural (escape fantasy…in mere seconds)
Irony:
o drown & hang under water
o surprise ending
o held slaves in bondage  PF dies in bondage
 bound hands
 bound neck
Allusions:
o slavery
 PF plantation owner
 pro-South, secessionist
o Greek god of the winds, AEOLUS
 gave Odysseus a bag of winds to help him on his voyage back home
 BUT
 his crew opened the bag & the winds escaped (foreshadows end)
 his name = “Earth destroyer” (planter??)
THEMES:
 anti-war
 anti-military
 irony – beauty in Nature
o heightened appreciation at death = sad, tragic waste
o wasted on delusions of grandeur in war
o (Flannery O’Connor)
 DENIAL:
o deny reality to protect ourselves
o not about to die BUT escape fantasy
 DECEPTION:
o Union soldier on PF
o PF on slaves?
o self-deception
 PF convinces himself that he can burn the bridge
 be somebody, be a hero
 wannabe
 delusion of grandeur
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o self-deception
 PF convinces himself that he can escape hanging
 escape fantasy
o AB on readers
 Reader = PF (tricked)
 “Bierce, who believed that fiction ought to challenge readers, once wrote that he detested
‘bad readers — readers who, lacking the habit of analysis, lack also the faculty of
discrimination, and take whatever is put before them, with the broad, blind catholicity of a
slop-fed conscience or a parlor pig.’”
DREAM vs. REALITY:
o dreams seem so real
 “snap!” back into reality
 “snooze-alarm dreams”
o PF’s romanticizing/idealization of war
 dream of being a war hero
o escape fantasy
 dream of reunion w/wife & children
o fantasies = self-deceptions
LIFE:
o see the beauty in life
o don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone
o appreciate it
stop & smell the roses
don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone
“all’s fair in love & war”
life passes before our eyes before we die
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PF (+/-)
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+
brave, sensitive, intelligent
poetic
Romantic
imaginative
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slave owner
accepts “all’s fair in love & war”
tries to blow up the bridge
impotent:
o wannabe soldier
o fails to blow up bridge
o wife wants to have sex w/soldier
(PF = object of satire)
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SATIRE:
o PF as (-)
o fantasies = self-deception
 like FOC’s HULGA
o snapped back into reality
o theme of anti-war, anti-military
o “all’s fair in love & war”
o surprise ending
o satire of passive reader
o AB = “fierce critic of man’s greed and hypocrisies in areas of government and institutions” (OLL)
 PF = greedy, hypocritical
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“OOCB” & “Story of an Hour”:
o 2 prisoners
o right before their deaths
o escape fantasy
o yanked back to reality
o slap in the face
Cummings Study Guide: < http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides4/owl.html >
< http://www.answers.com/topic/an-occurrence-at-owl-creek-bridge-story-4 >
< http://www.online-literature.com/bierce/ >