Summary Of 'An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge'

Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is a short story written by Ambrose Bierce about Peyton Farquhar, a confederate sympathizer who gets caught plotting the destruction of Owl Creek Bridge. As a result, Farquhar is subsequently hanged, and to the readers’ surprise, experiences a whole different reality before his death. The story is split into three parts, each depicting key points in the story. In the first part, Farquhar is shown to be at his noose on Owl Creek Bridge, where he is hanged while fantasizing about his freeing his hands and escaping. Next, in the second part, Farquhar’s history is revealed, and it is seen by the reader that he is a successful farmer who dreamed of becoming a confederate war hero.

When reading the third part of the story, the reader finds out the Farquhar had actually escaped death. In the story, Bierce says “he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream” which shows that Farquhar had actually been freed from his noose (Bierce, 5). Here, the reader was probably thinking that Farquhar was going to be hanged and that was the end of it, but his fantasy seems to become reality. Miraculously, he ends up being able to escape through the river, and is able to make it all the way back to the gate of his home. Stepping into his home, Farquhar is about to clasp his wife when “he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck...then all is darkness and silence...Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of Owl Creek Bridge” (Bierce, 11). Immediately, directly after clasping his wife, the readers are hit with the abrupt ending and are either left speechless or deceived. As a result, some critics feel as though the story was nothing but a cheap trick, but I disagree because there is more than just this abrupt ending; there had actually been hints toward such an ending. As critic Joseph Palmisano puts it “Several critics have derided the surprise ending regarding it as a perceptual trap and an unjustified trick” (par.

The fact alone that people consider his story a cheap trick shows that his story is already successful in ensnaring the reader in a false reality. This shows that he is able to captivate the reader and keep them involved, leading them to the unexpected ending that causes the criticism. What is even more impressive is the that Bierce was able to write the whole story with hints toward a fake reality, and some still criticize him for tricking the reader. If one had actually read the story carefully, they could tell that there were hints included that pointed toward Farquhar’s fake reality. According to critic Charles May, “‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’ is not a cheap trick; it is a sophisticated model of Bierce’s mastery of short fiction” which is something I agree with (par. 7). The fact that Bierce can write in a way where the reader can easily read and not realize that the ending was apparent and foreshadowed the whole time shows that he can make a story that is really engaging and immersive. He controls the reader by making them sympathetic and as May puts it “the reader 's sympathetic involvement with the reality of Farquhar 's escape that allows him or her to ignore such obvious unrealities.” Bierce creates a really engulfing story that bends the mind of the reader, to the point where they have to re-read the text to realize