THE DEEP ONES: "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce

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THE DEEP ONES: "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce

2AndreasJ
Apr 10, 2024, 7:08 am

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says that this story "should perhaps be read as nonfantastic", but I don't see what a nonfantastic explanation for Farquhar's sped up perception of time would be.

I quite liked the story, though, how Farquhar's vision, dream, or what you want to call it of heroic escape turns into nightmare.

Reading it, I was inevitably reminded of Borges' "The Secret Miracle". I see the WP entry for that story says that it's unknown if Borges was inspired by this tale, but it seems very likely.

3RandyStafford
Apr 11, 2024, 7:20 pm

I don't have any reason to change the following which I wrote years ago about this story.

Many Bierce stories feature optical illusions or plot points hinging on knowledge that is contingent with a specific line of sight or vantage position. Of course, angles of attack and lines of sight and commanding heights are all elements important in combat, so Bierce could be expected to mention them in a war memoir. But I speculate that serving as a topographical surveyor heightened his awareness of such things.

. . .

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” actually depends, in its retrospective power, on the skill one appreciates after re-reading story and knowing the surprise ending, on that careful attention to geometry.

In this tale of the hopeful hallucinations that go through a convicted Confederate spy’s brain from the moment a tilting board pulls him down to the moment his neck breaks, what Fahrquhar, the condemned man, sees in the last seconds of life are all explained. The “circular horizontal streaks of color” is the sun seen by his revolving head. The railroad ties above him become a forest. The congestion of blood in his eyes shows as “strange roseate light”.

The story has no supernatural elements and shows Bierce’s concern with psychological horror. And the end is sort of a morbid joke that is another common element in Bierce’s work.

4housefulofpaper
Edited: May 15, 2024, 7:39 pm

I read about this story decades before I actually got to read the original. It was in The Twilight Zone Companion which gives synopses of all the episodes, including the very last - an edited presentation of a French film adaptation of the story. The book is in no doubt about the nonfantastic nature of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”.

I was tempted to comment that it's a good fit with the original teleplays in The Twilight Zone but in fact they tend to be much more moralistic. Perhaps Charles Beaumont was closest to Bierce in sensiblity.

>3 RandyStafford: that's very illuminating, thank you. I didn't have a lightbulb moment and see that the hallucinated escape was constructed from the sense-impressions of the moment of hanging. I have the Folio Society edition of Bierce still waiting to be read. I'll try to pay attention to those topographical or perspective aspects of the stories, and also bear in mind (on the evidence of this story) perhaps everything is, somehow or other, rooted in reality.

Another televisual connection to Bierce. Just last weekend I read Charles Barr's short book on Vertigo in the BFI Film Classics series. He early on mentions the reading of the film that James Stewart's character couldn't escape from his predicament at the film's opening, and everything that follows is - as in Bierce's story - a dying man's final hallucinatory moments. Much later on, when explaining the development of the script, Barr reintroduces this idea and then tells us "the first of the Vertigo script revisions delivered by Taylor carries on its title page the startling words 'From among the Dead, or There'll Never be Another You, by Samuel Taylor and Ambrose Bierce'.

Carr goes on to argue that this "points to an affinity that goes deeper than any single structuring device", noting thematic and plot echoes between Vertigo and another Bierce story, "The Man Out of the Nose" as well as the strong sense of place - Bierce's San Francisco - in the film (remember how the plot harks back to the 19th Century as well as presenting the present- day (late '50s) city in great detail).