On Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (2)

Yuen M. Ho
English 48B
January 19, 2007
Journal #10 Ambrose Bierce

I. Quote

“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.”

II. Summary

There were many thoughts surging in the man’s mind before the execution. These thoughts, when expressed in words, took readers more than minutes to read and generate their own ones. While we may think the moment of silence before death has lasted for minutes, the author, implicitly, told us the otherwise. The delay was indeed short. There are several pieces of evidence. A more apparent one is that the man had to await with impatience each stroke of “ticking of his watch.” Besides, when he saw a piece of driftwood moving along with the river current, which was supposed to be rapid, he regarded the movement to be sluggish and slow.

III. Response

These few paragraphs of “slow motion” have basically set stage for the ending of the story that the entire part three of the story was purely imaginary and did not actually happen. Yet, the part had actually taken my breath away. I was not able to notice before reading through the end that all the escape and bullet shooting happened merely in the man’s mind – probably he was too anxious to embrace his death with silence and dignity. It would be too harsh a consequence to accept if he did not indulge himself in these thoughts of possibility of escape. He was not able to escape from his fate in reality, but he was able to escape form the reality in his imaginary world.

The ending in my regard is sad. The man did not seem to be able to comprehend the cause of his death. He once thought he was going to make contributions. Yet, he did not seem to have accomplished anything except bringing about the end of his life.

Bierce has showcased his writing skills by capturing readers’ mind in a story that did not constitute a story in its original form – for the entire incident only lasted for minutes and if described in plain words, would just be an ordinary story of an execution scene.