The Potential for Satire in Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Ambrose Bierce’s short story, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is undeniably one of Bierce’s most widely published and celebrated; simultaneously it has been the center of much academic debate. F.J Logan suggests An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge has historically been met with “critical inattention.”[1]  The critical inattention, or rather misdirected attention to An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge has resulted in a myriad of interpretations and responses from gimmicky to psychologically revealing. A brief examination of Bierce’s personal values and history offer much to undercut some of the less evolved readings of this text and evolve more established ones. By exploring the potential for satire in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge many of the more popular understandings of the text are expanded and transformed, offering a new an interesting perspective to Bierce’s most popular fiction.

It is important when reading Owl Creek Bridge to read between the lines as Bierce was highly critical of his own audience and his contemporary writers, being not only a social critic but a literary one.[2] Well known for his persistent pessimism he earned himself the nickname “Bitter Bierce”[3] among his peers; a name that should have called for a more thorough appraisal of what was labeled “a war yarn with a gimmicky ending”[4] by C. Brooks and R. Penn Warren. Bierce himself was an advocate of “close reading”[5] which required close attentiveness to texts, Bierce can be quoted: “bad readers – who, lacking the habit of analysis, lack also the faculty of discrimination, and take whatever is put before them, with the broad, blind catholicity of a slop-fed conscience of a parlor pig.”[6] With such strong words An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and Bierce himself demand at least a flirtation with the idea of literary satire.

The most noticeable literary technique employed in Owl Creek Bridge is the use of free indirect discourse.  Without the employment of this narrative strategy allowing the coming and going from the protagonist’s stream of consciousness the story wouldn’t exist. Beyond providing a structure for the plot, this narrative technique is pregnant with subtlety of Bierce’s satire. The distance that is opened between reader and protagonist with the use of free indirect discourse allows the reader to more freely interpret what Bierce has provided in the form of Peyton Farquhar as a satirical figure. This narrative space allows us to separate the voice of the third person narrator from that of Farquhar and provides the reader with enough space to laugh at him. Logan explains: “The irony … is Bierce’s; the timidity, triteness, and inanity are Farquhar’s. The words are not the author’s but the character’s, and they establish him as part villain manqué, part fool.”[7] What Logan has stumbled upon redeems Bierce of much of the criticism which he has received in this prose. John Kennedy Crane articulates this criticism in saying: “It is, of course, the blatant sentimentality that mars the story.”[8]

Logan and other critics would argue that what Crane has labeled “sentimentality” is actually a depiction of Bierce’s sardonic wit, not an indication of his softness. Cheatham notes that Bierce:  “through verbal irony and ironic juxtapositions, subtly delineates the would-be soldier as a naïve romantic, contrasting Farquhar’s illusions of war with warfare’s harsh truths.”[9]   With true eloquence, Cheatham has voiced the ways in which Farquhar can be read the fool.

The supposedly objective voice of the third person narrator too eagerly pushes the reader into a sympathetic view of Farquhar. During the opening lines of the first section we are met with a distant voice of the narrator providing with a military tone only observations of the scene and Federal troops within it. Bierce underlines the observational aspect of the troops with bridging terms: “a sergeant, who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff.”[10] or: “it did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring.”[11] The objectivity of this narrative voice quickly dissipates when shifting onto the character of Farquhar, the narrator subjectively suggesting that he: “had a kindly expression,”[12] even going so far as to remark on his moral character through observational terms: “Evidently this was no vulgar assassin.”[13] As if to tell the reader, objectively that Peyton Farquhar were a good man. This passage in particular confuses the readers’ distinction of an objective verses subjective narrator and is highly influential in arousing sympathies for the established “kindly” “gentleman”[14] by subtly shifting the narrative voice from objective to subjective and back again the readers own objectivity is confused.  While it is easy to fall into Bierce’s literary trap set through these playful manipulations of narrative perspective,[15] a careful reader may identify in Crane’s perceived “sentimentality,” the birthing of a burlesque.

Our introduction official introduction to the character of Farquhar as a man and not a mere observation reads:

               “Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner, and, like other slave owners, a politician he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature … had prevented him from taking service with the gallant army that had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in war time. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier…”[16]

Logan highlights in his observations of the text that the martial rhetoric leaps off the page.[17] He also sights Bierce’s use of mimesis of alliteration (longing … release … larger … life) as acting to aid the perpetuation of the burlesque by: “inflating these words and phrases, tendering them emptier than they inherently are … This calls attention to them and thus to the irony lurking within them …”[18] Cheatham also notes the heavy handedness of the irony in this passage.[19] Furthermore Cheatham suggests that Farquhar acts to satirize elements of Southern society that explicitly condemned previously by Mark Twain.[20] Taking a later example from American Literature, Peyton Farquhar holds all of the unrealistic values of war that were critiqued and denounced in Stephen Cranes Red Badge of Courage. Though the publication of Cranes novel took place five years after Owl Creek Bridge it acts as a strong point of comparison for changing reflections and ideas of the Civil War and war in general as literary trends moved away from romanticism and into realism.

Beyond the in text juxtapositions, the highly romanticized descriptions of the protagonist are juxtaposed with the readers understanding of history and thus must also be compared to the views of Bierce himself. The view that history is told by its victors is not altogether incorrect and the readers understanding of history must come into play when examining Farquhar as a satirical figure. Owl Creek Bridge was published in 1890, years after the conclusion of the war and loss of the Southern campaign. The fact that Bierce chose to place our protagonist on the losing side should not be overlooked. Nor should the reader fail to observe that Bierce himself was a self-enrolled Union soldier during those years,[21] a fact that would surely delineate Bierce’s own sympathies for his protagonist.

The romantic and sympathetic construction of Farquhar is a necessary tool to retain the interest of the reader, for openly mocking a dead man seems unnecessarily cruel. But it is in the misreading of this construction that subtlety of the satire is lost. At the end of each section Bierce undercuts the idealized world in which we are presented and somewhat mocks Farquhar’s narrative and systematically establishes irony.[22] In the first section, having already foreshadowed the twist ending by illustrating Farquhar’s dislocation from temporal and physical logic: “The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he would shriek.”[23] Bierce further underlines the unreliability and inferably the foolishness of Farquhar with the line: “What he heard was the ticking of his watch.”[24]

This pattern of undermining the protagonist is repeated in section two: “He was a Federal scout.”[25] Underscoring Farquhar’s lack of observational skills and even highlighting his overzealous enthusiasm for the Southern cause. While the final and most devastating blow that narrative technique delivers Farquhar is in section three: “Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of Owl Creek Bridge.”[26]  This final conclusion comes as a juxtaposition to the most saccharine and romantic cliché of Farquhar’s reunion with his wife.

“As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the verandah to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is!”

The same mimesis of alliteration is evident in this passage as was in the introduction to his character, suggesting that this too can be read as a burlesque.

The extreme juxtaposition between the ‘emotional’[27] reunification of lovers and death in the conclusion of the text could easily be (and has been) read in a myriad of ways. Either a confirmation of our sympathies towards Peyton Farquhar,[28] an example of Bierce’s acclaimed sardonicism or a literary technique to heighten the psychological thrill of the moments before death, leaving the reader too “hanging.”[29]  Given the depth and breadth of scholarly analysis surrounding Owl Creek Bridge it would be too audacious a task to address the transformative effect that the inclusion of satirical interpretation would have on these theories. But as is demanded by Bierce’s own views on reading practices and owed to the author, every avenue should be explored including that of satire. It is in the innumerable interpretations, one of which is satire, that spring from Bierce’s careful and meticulous manipulation of literary technique that secure his place in American Literature.

Ames, C.R “Do I Wake or Sleep? Technique as Content in Ambrose Bierce’s Short Story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”,” American Literary Realism, 1870-1910, 19 (1987) pp. 52-67

Bierce, A “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Volume 2: 1865 to the Present  Ed. Nina Baym. USA: W.W Norton & Company, Inc. 2012. 317-324

Brooks, C. Penn Warren, R. “From Fiction to Film / Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" Understanding Fiction 2^nd ed. Ed. Gerald R. Barrett and Thomas L. Erksine. New York. Appleton. 1959

Crane, J.K. “Crossing the Bar Twice: Post-Mortem Consciousness in Bierce, Hemmingway, and Golding” Studies in Short Fiction, 6 (1969) pp. 361-376

Cheatham, G. “Point of View in Bierce’s “Owl Creek Bridge”,” American Literary Realism, 1870-1910, 18 (1985) pp. 219-225

Fortenberry, G. E. “Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?): A Critical Bibliography of Secondary Comment” American Literary Realism 1870-1910, 4 (1971) pp. 11-56

Kramer Linkin, H. “Narrative Technique in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”,” The Journal of Narrative Technique, 18 (1988) pp. 137-152

Logan, F.J “The Wry Seriousness of “Owl Creek Bridge”,” American Literary Realism, 1870-1910, 10 (1977), pp. 101-113

Owens, D.M. “Bierce and Biography: The Location of Owl Creek Bridge” American Literary Realism, 1870—1910, 26 (1994) pp. 82-84

Wiggins, R. A. “Ambrose Bierce: A Romantic in an Age of Realism” American Literary Realism, 1870-1910, 4 (1971) pp. 1-10

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[1] Logan, 102

[2] Wiggins, pg. 2

[3] Norton, pg. 317 also Fortenberry, pg. 12 also Wiggins, pg. 3 and pg. 5

[4] Brooks, Penn Warren, pp. 52-53 in reference to An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

[5] Logan, 102

[6] Bierce “Prattle” in The San Francisco Argonaut, 22 June 1878 quoted from Logan, Ibid

[7] Logan, 105

[8] Crane, 363

[9] Cheatham, 219-220

[10] Bierce, 318 (own emphasis)

[11] Ibid (own emphasis)

[12] Ibid (own emphasis)

[13] Bierce, 319 (own emphasis)

[14] Bierce, 319

[15] Ames argues the importance of narrative shift to be in delineating the temporal logic of the text. While this paper focuses on satire it is a rejection of Bierce’s close reading practices not to at least acknowledge the development of other theories.

[16] Bierce, 319-320

[17] Logan, 104

[18] Logan, Ibid Cheatham also comments on the emptiness of these abstractions, pg. 220

[19] Cheatham, 220

[20] Ibid

[21] Norton anthology, pg. 317 and also Owens, pg. 82

[22] Cheatham,221

[23] Bierce, 319

[24] Ibid

[25] Bierce, 320

[26] Bierce, 324

[27] or satirical, depending on the reading which you choose to apply.

[28] Wiggins, pg. 7

[29] Kramer Linkin, pg. 52 Harriet’s thesis argues that the meaning of the story is to illustrate the readers susceptibility to rhetoric, this is similar to Logan’s argument of satire.