Download ANALYSIS “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1891 ... and more Summaries Music in PDF only on Docsity! ANALYSIS “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1891) Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) “[Stephen] Crane made no comment whatever, sliding his glass of whiskey up and down. Later he asked whether [journalist Robert H.] Davis had read Bierce’s ‘Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.’ ‘Nothing better exists. That story contains everything. Move your foot over,’ and he wanted to know what Bierce was like personally--especially whether he had plenty of enemies. ‘More than he needs,’ Davis said. ‘Good,’ said Crane. ‘Then he will become an immortal,’ and shook hands, just shaking his head when Davis gestured toward his untouched whiskey.” [1897] John Berryman Stephen Crane (World/Meridian 1962) 170 His best and most reprinted story is “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” A captured Confederate is hung from a bridge by Union troops, but the rope breaks--and he falls into the creek! He escapes ashore and finally makes it back to his plantation: “He must have traveled the entire night.” He rushes toward the open arms of his wife coming down from the veranda to embrace him. “As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck... His body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek Bridge.” The surprise ending and the gothic horror are in the tradition of Poe. As a whole, however, the story is a brilliant early example of Modernism, combining techniques of Realism, Impressionism and Expressionism with Naturalistic themes: “Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color--that was all he saw”; “They were in silhouette against the blue sky...their forms gigantic”; “The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson on perspective”; “A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of aeolian harps”; “his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth.” Bierce here joins Crane, Chopin and Wharton as the most vivid Impressionists in American fiction before F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story is exceptional for its psychological insights, its manipulation of time and its hallucinatory Expressionism.
