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- For the Twilight Zone episode of the same name, see An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (The Twilight Zone).
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is a short story by Ambrose Bierce originally written in 1886. It was first published in the 1891 collection Tales of Soldiers and Civilians.
Plot
Set during the American Civil War, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is the story of Peyton Farquhar, a Confederate sympathizer sentenced to death by hanging at the Owl Creek Bridge of the title. His crime was that he attempted to burn that same bridge down before Union soldiers got a chance to cross it.
When he is hanged the rope breaks and the main character falls into the water, from which he begins a journey back to his home. During his journey, he starts to feel some strange physiological events that ultimately end with a searing pain in his neck.
It turns out that the man never escaped at all; he imagined the entire thing during the time between being pushed off the bridge and the noose finally breaking his neck. This surprising revelation is an example of an unreliable narrator.
Adaptations
At least three film adaptations of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" have been produced, the first being a silent movie made in the 1920s. A French version called "La Rivière du Hibou", directed by Robert Enrico, was released in 1962. Filmed in stark black and white, the film faithfully recounts the original narrative using voice-over. It later went on to win the award for best short subject at the 1962 Cannes film festival and 1963 Academy Awards. In 1964 La Rivière du Hibou aired on American television as an episode of the anthology series The Twilight Zone. See An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (The Twilight Zone). Another version, directed by Brian James Egan, was released in 2005.
The 1962 film Carnival of Souls and the 1990 film Jacob's Ladder were inspired by An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, along with countless others. Sir William Golding's novel Pincher Martin uses precisely the same gimmick as Bierce's story, and Golding even admits the similarity in an afterword to the novel.
References in popular culture
In 2005, Kurt Vonnegut referred to Occurrence in his book A Man Without a Country as one of the greatest works of American literature, and called anyone who hadn't read it a "twerp".
In 2006, Bierce's story was referenced on an episode of the ABC television series Lost entitled "The Long Con".
External links
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"