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Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"

The curious detachment to that Ambrose Bierce brings to his description of an impromptu wartime hanging in "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is disconcerting to say the least. The stark prose manages to be physically descriptive yet terse and devoid of any emotional commentary or meanderings of philosophical thought. Bierce has an odd way of catching the reader's attention, describing first a man and the water below, the noting that his hands are bound and there is a noose around his neck. This subversion of detail and perversion of priority renders the reader cognitively mute as Bierce continues to paint this scene of military condemnation with a calm deliberateness that only a writer of his stature could make interesting despite the lack of character development in the opening paragraphs of the story -- he has the ability to make his readers interested in mere scenery.

Of course, nothing is mere scenery at the moment one thinks they are about to die, and that is exactly what Peyton Farquhar, the man so eloquently not described in the first few paragraphs of Bierce's story, believes is going to happen to him. The rope and soldiers, in fact, leave very little doubt. If there is one thing Bierce can do at least as well as describing the scenery, however, it is creating a twist, and it is in the twists that the true virtues of this story lie. Bierce shows us the picture of a man -- he could be any man, at first -- and lets us know he is about to die. This makes the story compelling, and Bierce's description makes the story real. What makes the story great, however, is neither the fact that it is compelling or real, but rather the fact that it leads us willingly or no to face new facets and understandings of ourselves and our fellow man, and what it means to be human.

Ambrose Bierce is not a preacher, and he does not preach through his stories. There are no good or evil men in this tale, and readers hoping for a moral, or even a strong sense of moralism, should stop at the noose in the third sentence, for this is all the moral Bierce will give you explicitly. What is, is, this story seems to say emphatically, and ironic, strange, or contrary that might be, there's just no changing this simple fact of life.

There's also no changing the fact that some of this tale is somewhat systematic in its exposition, with key information coming late in several passages as a revelation that turns the direction of the story in a near reversal each time. But through it all, Bierce's even tone and calm, lucid prose resists any temptation towards cliches of sensationalism, plodding directly and singularly on to his story's end. Farquhar thinks many ting while standing on that bridge, and when his feet have left the solidness of the wood and rails, but none of them really prepare either he or the reader for the objective truth. By the end of the story it is apparent that this is the only thing that really matters, explaining Bierce's subtle tone.