A Reader-Response Criticism on "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"

This is a story that brings its reader full-circle. Many writers like to employ "book-ends": making the end of their tale call up memories from the start. Ambrose Bierce takes this a step further, ending his story at almost exactly the same moment it started, and leaving us with emotions that are '" if not exactly the same '" surprisingly similar to those we experienced during the first scene.

As the story begins, there is very little action. A man stands on a bridge, soldiers stand nearby, there is a small fort in the distance -- Readers can almost see the sun hanging dead in the sky, feel flies buzzing around their heads, perhaps hear the sound of a crow. We are not yet reading a story: we're looking at a picture. When we see the noose tied around the civilian's neck, it's self-explanatory. We have a feeling of complete inevitability.

The closer we move toward the event of the hanging, we get a hint of excitement: the prisoner is having thoughts of escape. Our hopes are not violently dashed to pieces, but merely forgotten with the simple sentence, "The sergeant stepped aside." After all, we expected this from the moment we saw the noose. We hadn't hoped for anything else, not really. There wasn't any hope.

It is at this point that the story begins taking the form of a traditional narrative, rather than a seemingly-random scene of an execution. After a paragraph break, the author launches us on a flashback to the life of the condemned man, Peyton Farquhar. Despite our knowledge that he is doomed, it's easy to take comfort in this portion of the tale. It's calm, cheerful, and feels somehow familiar. Executions will come when they may: we're safe in the past. For now.

Peyton is immediately well-liked by the reader. Despite most of us having moral qualms with slavery, this southern gentleman doesn't seem like a cruel or unreasonable man. Were it not social heresy to say it, I could almost see Peyton's slaves working happily in the fields, singing songs while the master takes his wife out for a ride in the buggy. He is a hard-working, politically active, dedicated man: "No service was too humble to him to perform in aid of the South." He willingly assists the gray-clad soldier who comes to his house, and implies that he is willing to risk his life to stop the Yankees' march. We are outraged upon learning that the strange soldier is a spy for the North.

Now we're back at the sight of the hanging, with new insight. Peyton falls, he is in pain, he is choking -- then he is falling again. We are told that the rope has broken: all is not lost! He hits the river far below. In his pain he wishes to die, but we cheer him on as he tears the noose from his neck and dives to avoid shots from the Union soldiers. Too excited to care about his physical pain, we urge our hero on! You can do it!

Time after time the soldiers fire at him from the bridge. The men in the fort are alerted: a cannon is fired at Peyton as he frantically swims down-river. Our initial excitement is now twinged with fear. What if he is killed? But no, he will escape: he must!

A good distance from the fort, a tide washes him onto the sand. Ecstatic, he throws the sand in the air with renewed appreciation for its beauty. It is hard at this point to share in his pleasure, desperately as we wish we could. The enemy is still too close. The thought of him being retaken is unbearable. Not when he's come so far.

Again he runs. Again shots are fired. Again the reader takes Peyton's side, running with him through woods; too active now to fear: too engaged in our quest.

When Peyton sees his home lying before him at last, it is as if we have ourselves come home. His wife stands in the yard: "Ah, how beautiful she is!" But before he can grasp her in his arms, "a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon." Sound? What sound! Surely no one has pursued him so far! It isn't fair!

And it is only now, in the very last sentence of the story that we return to Owl Creek Bridge where our hero hangs dead. Instantly the reader realizes that everything since the hanging has been a lie: a fantasy concocted by Peyton in the time it took his neck to snap; for at the moment of death, what is time?

Too sad to be disappointed, too horrified to be angry, I lay down my book. It was always the same story: it was always going to end this way. And there it is again: inevitability.