Short Story Review || An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1890)
"Peyton Farquhar, awaits his execution by hanging. Just as the noose tightens around his neck, Farquhar experiences a vivid and surreal escape attempt."
: 🌕 : SPOILER ALERT : 🌕 :
Disquieted by the turbine of waves, the narrator reveals himself as the voice of reason. Setting the scene with markers of old, the cooing voice bemoans the reader for their frown, encouraging them to keep their eyes peeled for the one detail that will ruin the mirage. Within the serpentine Civil War, fought on land stolen, pillaged, & bloodied ravingly, Peyton’s contribution to history will be all but lost. The river droves on merrily with him in it.
“A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below.”
I would be remorseful to hold back on making clear my ignorance. Coming across this story was a stroke of luck & although I cannot say that this review will boast of loving acclaim, I do praise the written word that is sweeter than a bear’s favourite honey. Before that, I must announce that Bierce was a stranger to me. Taking time to read what has become a most prolific piece of literature years after the vanishing of the stout combatant, I find myself disturbed.
Who was Ambrose Bierce? There are names one comes across that wiggle themselves soundly into the crock of the ear like a Scutigera Coleoptrata; legs that scurry over the skin, a sightless body that roves silently, the name of a man whose history has all but been lost to me now comes into the clearing & the bug’s body bursts.
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Part of what makes short stories so appealing to me is that they allow me the soft & uncompromising discovery of an author. Bierce will be well-known to those who have read literature that touches on the American Civil War.
According to the Poetry Foundation, Bierce was someone for whom the word “prolific” did not come close to shedding light on his monstrously deep well of talents & abilities. Having fought in several battles during the Civil War, written about the experiences of soldiers in a journalistic fashion, & flexing his reflective, philosophizing prowess in criticisms at writ large, Bierce’s reputation as a Titan of the literary world is not without merit.
This story is but one example of what many claim to be the ripened fruit of his abilities. I am always somewhat abashed, in a tenderly intimate way, when I come upon authors whose capabilities with language flood into the world of criticism. Perhaps I might allow myself to dream of the moment when my own penned prose will see the light of day bolstered by hours of criticism without restraint.
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Having now read this story, I found my knowledge lacking. This is not a negative thing, but upon reflecting on the value of such a story, I wondered if the world might have forgotten that suckling the vine for syrup was an undertaking that required patience, & trust. For in this plot, readers will find that their aged discontent with lying & folies mirage the tar where Peyton’s hope was hung to die.
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In essence, this is a story about a man who was tricked by a Union Soldier dressed as a member of the Confederate State Army, & for his crime, he was hanged. Peyton was from an old, successful, & well-respected family in Alabama. One evening, he was outside, standing on his land, when a soldier in a Confederate uniform rode up to him. Peyton made clear his desire to have Union soldiers burned on the bridge they were allegedly repairing in order to make headway in the battle against the Confederates. During this casual conversation, Peyton’s fate was decided.
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Upon completing this story, I realized how little I knew about the context in which it took place. Peyton was a Planter during the Civil War, which means he was a very prolific slave owner, a member of a social class that was the most economically and politically powerful in the Southern United States.
Understanding the dynamics of the Civil War will allow readers to better appreciate the story as it is told. Whereas my original understanding of the war was very basic, I soon realized that my ignorance allowed me to wander through this story with some semblance of sympathy for a man who was representative of horrific acts of violence against an entire demographic of human beings.
Certainly, I am neither alone nor a minority in my ignorance. The American Civil War is decidedly simplified. I wonder whether Bierce would find this approach to historically significant events curious, humorous, or disgusting.
To save face, perhaps I should defend myself by stating that I am not an American, nor did the American Civil War factor into my French-Canadian curriculum. Therefore, one should forgive me for the early onset curiosity I found in the hanging of a man who was, to my knowledge, a simple farmer.
Yet, I would not wish for this to be so. In literature, the reader has, on occasion, the opportunity to grow. Some readers may come upon this story with the same level of ignorance that I held a few mere hours earlier & wander out the end of the story’s conclusion no more enlightened than when they started. They are at liberty to do so.
As for myself, the terms, references, & twists enticed me to the World Wide Web, where I was met with dedicated resources, posted with notorious intention, for someone like me to find. Upon learning of the reasons a man would be hanged for simply voicing his contempt for the unknown opposing “Yankees,” I found the need to read the whole story over again, as I most certainly had missed what was staring me right in the face.
Sitting with the knowledge I had acquired left me feeling shocked. Had Bierce hoped for a reader to toy with their ignorance? Would he have wanted the reader to feel flummoxed by the nonchalance with which he wrote this story? The more I learned about the author, the deeper I crawled into the caverns of my analysis.
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Bierce’s writing style is crisp like a freshly bloomed rose. The story’s introduction is ravenous with atmospheric intention, guiding readers through the humidity that oozes from the pores of every character standing on Owl Creek’s bridge. The soothing nature of such a scene cannot but be lost on a reader whose emotional reactions take heed, leading them to wonder why they are brought to the bridge with these malicious men.
Yet, in this scene, the reader will also find the life breath of the author pulsating through each melodramatic comma, hyphen, & period. Peyton’s battle for survival appears heroic, nearly enrapturing. The man, having been cast down to the depths of the riverbed, manages to free his hands from their binds, & drifts further down the water to safety, struggling continuously against drowning.
When he arrives on land, his fight against the poorly aimed bullets of the Union Soldiers litters the space around him, their heat emanating the malevolence they carried. Yet, Peyton’s only goal is to return to his home & the safety of his wife & son.
What I find quite interesting about his desires is that nowhere during this entire sequence does the reader come to understand the home life Peyton seeks to return to. This is not to say that I longed for details, rather, I was glad for the insignificance attributed to the absence of background, Bierce coloured into the shading of the trees.
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Peyton’s success in life was thanks to his longstanding beliefs of bigotry. Had it not been for the hundreds (thousands) of people who were enslaved, Peyton & his son would have had no land on which to live, feed, & thrive. Yet when it came down to understanding why his ineptitudes would have left him deviled like soggy eggs, Peyton, unsurprisingly, came up short.
Although the themes of this story will encourage readers to ponder the nature of developing sympathies for any swan with a song to sing, Bierce seems to offer readers the tombstone of their demise in advance. He has set the scene & writes freely about the enthusiasm that Peyton fosters with regard to brutal violence. Yet, the reader is then meant to wonder enthusiastically whether Peyton’s dream of overcoming adversity is one worth believing in.
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Perhaps this review has oversimplified a complicated matter. Peyton is a man with a son. He is a man with dreams, & a home that requires his efforts & attention. In these, I find myself returning to the shadowed silence of earlier. By killing Peyton in the hanging, Bierce reminds readers of the person he truly was without naming him the Salamander King.
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In his final moments, before his neck snapped & everything went dark, Peyton dreamt of surviving the evil that was done to him. He thought fleetingly of his wife & child, but most of all, he wanted to go unnoticed.
Readers may interpret his desire to remain at the bottom of the creek as his longing to hide from punishment. The world in which Peyton & his family long prospered was changing; he would soon be left to grovel for scraps from those whom he tormented without restraint. This, however, would remain a long time coming.
Therefore, perhaps his dreams of wandering the underbelly of water’s flow near his home were not unjustified. Perhaps he was right to believe that his life would go on as it always had.
Peyton was not alone in his behaviour, nor was he the only man to hold these same values & disregard for human life. I wonder if Bierce wanted the reader to remember that a man is a man from around the block or the roundness of the globe; he dies in much the same way, with a final breath racked from within.
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Ultimately, this story ranks among those which allowed me to deepen my understanding of the world. Men like Peyton still exist today, though the war has been fought & victory claimed. The men who died, buried bleeding into the ground of Peyton’s Alabama homestead, remain faceless still.
Times continue to change, yet the players remain much the same. You will forgive me for my pessimism. I remember the eagerness I felt being raised in a world where the Indian Residential School was finally closed, where the fear of Serfdom need not plague one’s dreams, where Slavery was abolished & equality was named the pearl of English vernacular.
Perchance, these dreams of hope may rise again. Bierce reminds us that in all things, there is an end. The bright light which might terrify us will be dimmed & the shining spectre cast back into the claws of its maker. I wonder about the world as it has been & what it shall become once I, too, am gone. My references will remain unlinked to current experiences & terminology will no longer reflect the gate of progress as we have known it.
Peyton’s life was, in all likelihood, valued by someone whom the reader will never know. Yet, they need only explore the periphery of the story to be reminded of who the throbbing heart might belong to. Syrupy & sweet like a freshly strung tongue, Bierce’s story is exquisite & soft like water before rainfall.
The buoyance of his riffle, strung over his shoulder, as he wanders the new age literary world from his disappeared state should act as a cautionary tale. If one becomes too great, the world will never cease to miss you when they meet you once again, if almost nearly, by mistake.
If you would like to read this story, please visit this link — « An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge » by Ambrose Bierce
C. 💌