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Learning GoalsAbout the Story
The Author
The setting
Genre, Themes, Symbolism
The Plot
The Characters
The Story
Activities
Credits
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Learning GoalsLoading...
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Identify and enjoy features of classic literature.Analyze interactions among discourse elements that constitute a genre.
Acquire vocabulary and grammar structures in context.
Develop higher order thinking skills to spot clues, make inferences, think critically and draw conclusions to pose arguments in answer to writing and speaking prompts.
Engage in individual and collaborative group work in integrated language skills.
About the Story
Set during the American Civil War, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek" is Bierce's most famous short story. It was first published in the San Francisco Examiner in 1890. It then appeared in Bierce's 1891 collection Tales of Soldiers and Civilians.
Source : https://americanliterature.com/
The Author
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce, (born June 24, 1842, Meigs county, Ohio, U.S.—died 1914, Mexico?), American newspaperman, wit, satirist, and author of sardonic short stories based on themes of death and horror. His life ended in an unsolved mystery.
Reared in Kosciusko county, Indiana, Bierce became a printer’s devil (apprentice) on a Warsaw, Indiana, paper after about a year in high school. In 1861 he enlisted in the 9th Indiana Volunteers and fought in a number of American Civil War battles, including Shiloh and Chickamauga. After being seriously wounded in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in 1864, he served until January 1865, and he received a merit promotion to major in 1867.
Reared in Kosciusko county, Indiana, Bierce became a printer’s devil (apprentice) on a Warsaw, Indiana, paper after about a year in high school. In 1861 he enlisted in the 9th Indiana Volunteers and fought in a number of American Civil War battles, including Shiloh and Chickamauga. After being seriously wounded in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in 1864, he served until January 1865, and he received a merit promotion to major in 1867.
The Setting
The setting of the story is in northern Alabama during the Civil War, where both Union and Confederate soldiers rarely clashed but many Confederates hailed from.
Genre, Themes and Symbolism
Genre
Civil War short stories genre, historic fiction in their realistic portrayal of actual events, soldiers, and battles. Since Bierce served in the War, he coupled his gifted writing abilities with his credible and dramatic stories that brought the complexities of war to life for his readers.
Themes
Defenders - A person must be willing to defend his way of life, culture, and family when threatened by an enemy no matter the cost of it.
Safety versus risk - Safety and home is contrasted sharply with danger and fighting the enemy.
Time - A constant theme Bierce uses throughout the story, both in the order of events. Time slows down the closer he comes to death . Time relates to Farquahar's emotions. The pendulum represents the swing of his feelings from fear, grief, loss, love, courage to escape. It's a symbol of time.
Motion: Another prevailing theme Bierce uses to describe the river, Farquhar's emotions, and his lack of motion (bound to be hanged), and his sudden and fateful motion falling from the bridge after his neck snaps and he's dead. Finally, his vision of his own escape, swimming and diving in the river dodging gunshots, then movement towards the vision of his wife.
Sound: Bierce describes the silence by amplifying certain sounds , the raging river, while the soldiers, guns and cannon remain silent. Sound plays a role again at the end: his vision of the white light then all is darkness and silence.
Life after death: The comfort of the "White Light": Particularly in the face of certain death, we have the power to visualize our own escape to safety.
Rules define actions: Soldiers adhere to the military's rules of conduct for hanging an enemy; the rules also prescribe silence in honor of Death. Farquahar perceives his own duty or rules for defending the Confederacy.
The Owl Creek bridge suggests connection and transition.
Driftwood, as it makes its way downriver, represents both Farquhar’s unattainable freedom and Farquhar himself as he begins imagining his own escape in the water.
A distorted sensory experience and the color gray throughout the story are the motifs of the story.
Civil War short stories genre, historic fiction in their realistic portrayal of actual events, soldiers, and battles. Since Bierce served in the War, he coupled his gifted writing abilities with his credible and dramatic stories that brought the complexities of war to life for his readers.
Themes
Defenders - A person must be willing to defend his way of life, culture, and family when threatened by an enemy no matter the cost of it.
Safety versus risk - Safety and home is contrasted sharply with danger and fighting the enemy.
Time - A constant theme Bierce uses throughout the story, both in the order of events. Time slows down the closer he comes to death . Time relates to Farquahar's emotions. The pendulum represents the swing of his feelings from fear, grief, loss, love, courage to escape. It's a symbol of time.
Motion: Another prevailing theme Bierce uses to describe the river, Farquhar's emotions, and his lack of motion (bound to be hanged), and his sudden and fateful motion falling from the bridge after his neck snaps and he's dead. Finally, his vision of his own escape, swimming and diving in the river dodging gunshots, then movement towards the vision of his wife.
Sound: Bierce describes the silence by amplifying certain sounds , the raging river, while the soldiers, guns and cannon remain silent. Sound plays a role again at the end: his vision of the white light then all is darkness and silence.
Life after death: The comfort of the "White Light": Particularly in the face of certain death, we have the power to visualize our own escape to safety.
Rules define actions: Soldiers adhere to the military's rules of conduct for hanging an enemy; the rules also prescribe silence in honor of Death. Farquahar perceives his own duty or rules for defending the Confederacy.
The Owl Creek bridge suggests connection and transition.
Driftwood, as it makes its way downriver, represents both Farquhar’s unattainable freedom and Farquhar himself as he begins imagining his own escape in the water.
A distorted sensory experience and the color gray throughout the story are the motifs of the story.
The Plot
The story is divided into three sections. In the first section, we learn that a man is about to be hanged by a Union captain in the middle of a bridge over raging water in Northern Alabama, but he does not look like a vulgar assassin. We find out the man is Peyton Farquhar, a well-off Southern Planter who may have been a captain, or at least sympathetic to the Confederacy. Just as the soldiers step aside to commence his hanging and Farquhar can only hear the sound of his watch ticking, we move to the second section, in which we get Farquhar's back-story. Farquhar asked a soldier who appeared to be from the Confederate Army about news from the front, and learned that the Northern forces were repairing the railroads and nearing Owl Creek bridge to advance their forces. The soldier, who was actually a Union soldier in disguise, told Farquhar that any civilian caught interfering with the North's efforts would be hanged, and also mentioned how easy it would be to set the bridge on fire. In the third and last section, we are back at the scene of the hanging. It seems that Farquhar is awakened by the cold current of the river, having lost consciousness after the noose broke and he fell from the bridge. His executioners are firing at him from the bridge, he suffers a gunshot wound, comes up for air, dives back under, only to see a cannonball land within two yards. He thinks he's doomed, but then seems to be ejected from the river onto a bank, out of sight and firing range. But then he hears gunshots, escapes through the forest, taking backroads to return to his home. He seems to greet his wife, but then feels a sharp blow on his neck, sees a blinking white light, and all falls to silence and darkness. The end of the story reveals that Farquhar's broken body is still swinging from the side of Owl Creek Bridge, where he died, after all.