An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Summary & Analysis

Bierce uses the first few paragraphs to set the scene and to establish the dramatic tensions inherent in the story. Most of the details in this section concern the story’s Civil War setting, but they also sharply contrast the man to be executed (a genteel, well-dressed Southerner acting alone) with the Union soldiers charged with executing him (anonymous men moving in sync, all wearing the same clothes with little to differentiate them). That allows the reader to focus on the divide between the two, as well as quickly ascertaining what the story will be about.

This passage further emphasizes the precision and efficiency of the Union soldiers preparing to hang this man. There’s a feeling of enhanced doom about the soldier’s preparations, with an emphasis on Farquhar’s vulnerability and the fact that there’s no way out of his condition.

The ticking watch is the most potent symbol of one of the story’s most pervasive notions: as Farquhar approaches death, the last few moments of his life are experienced in a state of heightened awareness. Little details take on enhanced importance, and become even more pronounced as his odyssey continues. The ticking watch enhances the idea that death is coming for Farquhar no matter what he does to avoid it.

This passage represents Farquhar’s last moments before he dies, and as such the last moments of “objective” reality before his hallucination takes over. It establishes how what he’s thinking of in that moment—his family—becomes a beacon for everything he wants to live for. He even plots some fantastic means of escape in order to get back to them, a fantasy that he lives out in the ensuing hallucination. The passage serves both as foreshadowing for what is to come and an ironic juxtaposition between the perceived purity of his family (and the society they represent) with the slavery that allows them to live such “pure” lives.

This is where the story’s Civil War aspects take their most potent form. Farquhar is portrayed as a slave-owning Southern patriot willing to do anything for his cause, and his wife is subtly portrayed as a beneficiary of the slaveholding society that Farquhar wants to preserve. It’s a subtle implication of the character and his politics: even though he’s technically a non-combatant, he’s devoted to the South and directly benefits from slavery. Therefore, he is guilty of the same crimes as his cause, and deserving of the punishment he’s about to receive.

At the same time that Bierce condemns Farquhar’s politics, he also shows how the Union scout acts duplicitously, suggesting that he tricked Farquhar into attempting sabotage in order to execute him. That’s in keeping with the story’s realist tone: Bierce neither champions nor condemns the Union’s methods, but simply notes that such methods were used.

 This marks the beginning of Farquhar’s dreamlike “escape.” It starts with a kind “reset,” where he loses consciousness and all goes black. Then, step-by-step, he regains his senses and his feelings, accompanied by frantic activity to escape his bonds. He seems to be living out his last wish—to somehow free himself and get back to his wife—but that escape is accompanied by constant pain. The pain emphasizes the fact that there’s something wrong with his escape, and that he hasn’t stopped suffering just because he thinks he might be free of his bonds.

The earlier passages about his ticking watch and the driftwood set the stage for this sequence, when the details of life around them magnify to almost superhuman portions. The descriptions break from Bierce’s previous tone of strict realism, but retain their sparse, no-nonsense structure: creating a dream-like tone of surreal details. The reader is more keenly aware that these are Farquhar’s perceptions—not the objective truth—and the enhanced details emphasize an increased subjectivity in the narrative.

The gray eyes make a strong example of how Bierce achieves such a surreal tone for this section. Farquhar notices that the marksman’s eyes are gray despite being a long distance away, in a great deal of pain, and swimming madly for his life. The idea that such a detail could be perceived in such circumstances is far-fetched and stresses how “supernatural” Farquhar’s senses have become. More to the point, Bierce connects the color of the eyes to the shooter’s marksmanship—something that has no logical link, but which might make sense in Farquhar’s mind because “he remembered having read that gray eyes were the keenest.” Bierce’s realistic tone doesn’t change, but by marrying it more closely to Farquhar’s subjective perceptions the tone becomes strange and dreamlike.

This is the first sign that Farquhar isn’t experiencing reality, but is either in some kind of afterlife or is experiencing a hallucination. His surroundings are overtly unnatural. More importantly, they hold some sinister significance, and the story starts to feel more like a horror tale instead of a war story. Considering Bierce’s status as a Union veteran and his protagonist’s status as a slaveholder, it’s reasonable to assume that the sinister overtones of this journey suggest a kind rough justice: that Farquhar deserves such creepy surroundings, and that the haven he thinks he is traveling to is an illusion.

Thoughts of his wife and children become a strong motivation for Farquhar as his hallucination continues. They represent peace, serenity, and purity: strong enough for him to travel a nightmarish landscape to get back to them. Yet they’re snatched away just before he reaches them. That continues the sense of cosmic justice form the passage above—that Farquhar is being tormented for his sins before his life is snuffed out—while also making a keen point about the antebellum society his family represents. That society was destroyed by the Civil War and can never come back. Farquhar’s destination is an illusion, and he can never achieve the peace and comfort his family represents.

Bierce keeps the writing no nonsense here by pulling us out of Farquhar’s hallucination and retuning to the staccato realism of the first section of the book. That helps give the famous twist an extra bit of irony, while hammering home the notion of inescapable doom so strongly emphasized in the story’s first passages. The shorter the passage, the more effectively the emotional punch; Bierce allows the reader to revel in the sudden, surprising twist and meditate on what Farquhar’s strange final “journey” might have really been.