MAJOR PAPER 1

Written by Ambrose Bierce, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” takes place at a dilapidated railroad bridge in Alabama during the Civil War and us as the readers are about to witness the hanging of Peyton Farquhar. As Farquhar looks down at the water beneath his feet, his mind drifts off as he thinks of ways to escape. The Union Captain leading the execution nods ushering the soldier on the opposite side of Farquhar’s wooden plank to step aside and let gravity take will. Such an intense moment as this poses the question of how does Peyton Farquhar divide his mind and body? As Farquhar plummets to his inevitable death, his mind seeks a distractive outlet from witnessing his lifespan coming to an end, and in turn, distorts his reality as a defense mechanism because he refuses to process that he is going to die.

In Farquhar’s last moments alive, the action of his execution is entirely calculated and robotic. “As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside” (Bierce, 1.7). With just a step our main character has started the end of his life. In a crazy way, it’s like every person on this bridge is experiencing these few seconds on completely different spectrums. The Captain is unforgiving, ready to lead treasonous individual to death. The Sergeants are doubtful, unsure of their feelings of being labeled in one light as heroes and another light as murderers. Peyton Farquhar feels like he’s in the line of fire, a man with his life ready to flash before his eyes.

In “Freud and Farquhar: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge?” by James G. Powers, he explicated this state of psychosis in detail (Powers). Paragraph six of his article goes on to pull apart the “desires of the heart” feeling and really break down how Farquhar believes that he has broken free from his ropes as well as his captors, yet in reality his body is being treated in comparison to a sandbag on the stage during Phantom of the Opera because of how abruptly and lifeless his fall seemed. Struggling seems like a highly ineffective usage of his time being that he is standing on a rickety old piece of wood and only kept up by the weight of the Sergeant on the other side keeping concretely still until he is ushered to move ever so slightly and rather swiftly. Nevertheless, the moment where the reader can “witness an exquisitely sensuous and liberating moment which Farquhar’s untrammeled soul luxuriously responds to with all the emotional and physical resources at it's command” truly speaks volumes (Powers). These very last lines of the story are the only times in the entire story where the mind and body are on cohesive planes: unrelentless panic, then total quiet. Farquhar transformed into a violent video game that was suddenly unplugged, active then passive.

It’s quite strange how Farquhar has this strong will to be a martyr and die for his cause of the strength in the South. Think about it. He willingly goes out and attempts to deface a bridge simply because it was the vessel of transportation for a trope of Union soldiers. All the while, knowing that the punishment for this deed would be death by hanging. During these times, hanging was primarily reserved for criminals. This makes perfect sense, correct? False! As he dove into the water beneath him, Farquahr narrates that “[b]y diving I could evade the bullets”(Bierce, 1.5). This type of execution has been reserved for soldiers and is acclaimed as the soldier’s death. Henceforth, for Farquahr to want to act as a soldier in life, but refuse to die as one makes him come across as a coward.

Furthermore, Farquhar had full control of his mind the entire time. If he was able to think of absolutely anything before his death, why did it play out that way? He could have had his whole life flash before his eyes. He could have thought about his beautiful wife one last time. He could have spent a few more seconds with his children in mind. He even could have thought of what his hanging would look like from third person point of view. However, none of this was the case. Farquahr manifested an imagination beyond comprehension. This man managed to escape his captors by a fraction of a hair. He makes his own journey difficult to achieve, talking about injuries he acquires on his way back home. It very well could have been as simple as just miraculously escaping and making it home in one piece. Nevertheless, he doesn’t let himself get off that easily. Farquhar makes sure that he suffers on his trek, possibly because he does not feel that he deserves to have escaped (Stoicheff).

On another note, the main character isn’t even successful in his task. Even in his mental manifestation, he never even thinks about going back to the bridge to finish the job he started. It just boggles the mind that the very thing he was trying to stop, both the repair of the bridge and the progression of the Union into the Confederate states, were the two things that overcame him in the end. This portrays an act similar to a dog with its tail behind it's legs because of the shame. Maybe he chooses to run so far and so fast, not because the soldiers were shooting and he was going to die, but because he is too ashamed of how he was going to die that he didn’t want to be present for his own hanging. Maybe he didn’t think the death he was given was not on his terms and he has to combat it. This could be a plausible explanation of why Farquhar put himself through that much before getting home.

It is quite ironic that he never makes it to either of his destinations, both in his hallucination and in real life. (Conlogue). Yes, he freed himself. Yes, he ran the many miles, through his own made up trials and tribulations by the way. Yes, he got to see his wife and children and was only inches from being with them, but this is the end of both tales. Farquhar was unable to make it home to his family after he “ran away” from his problems. In the real world, Farquhar was unable to stop the Union soldiers from coming into Alabama like he planned. He was unable to stop the bridge from functioning. He was unable to achieve all of his goals in a matter of moments and that realization is all viewed in that lining of that noose. This is why he chose to dream himself away from this moment. Farquhar just couldn’t bare to let anyone down. Not his family, not the Confederacy, and definitely not himself.

“These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion” (Bierce, 3.1). These lines are the kickstarters to the ascension of hallucination and the removal of the rational mental state that once lived in the mind of Peyton Farquhar. Such an intense moment as this poses a the question of how does Peyton Farquhar divide his mind and body? As Farquhar plummets to his inevitable death, his mind seeks a distractive outlet from witnessing his lifespan finally end and in turn distorts his reality as a defense mechanism because he refuses to process that he is going to die.

Works Cited

Bierce, A. An Occurance At Owl Creek Bridge. Crestwood, 1980. Print.

Conlogue, William. “Bierce’s AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE.” Explicator, vol. 48, no. 1, Fall 1989, p. 37. EBSCOhost, db16.linccweb.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=7207705&site=ehost-live.

Powers, James G. “Freud and Farquhar: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge?” Studies in Short Fiction, vol. 19, no. 3, Summer 1982, p. 278. EBSCOhost, db16.linccweb.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=9270252&site=ehost-live.

Stoicheff, Peter. “`Something Uncanny’: The Dream Structure in Ambrose Bierce’s `An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’.” Studies in Short Fiction, vol. 30, no. 3, Summer 1993, p. 349. EBSCOhost, db16.linccweb.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=9312062839&site=ehost-live.