Occurrences at the Edge of Life

As a teenager, I read Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” a short story published in 1891 about the hanging of a Confederate sympathizer during the American Civil War. Ever since, I’ve been fascinated by the idea that a person at the point of death might have an elaborate vision in which a compelling wish is fulfilled.

Ambrose Bierce was a soldier in the American Civil War, and is renowned for his short stories set in that period. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is about Peyton Farquhar, a southern plantation owner about to be hanged for attempting to destroy Owl Creek bridge, a Yankee stronghold. The rope is around his neck and his last heartfelt desire is to return to his wife and home. The plank under his feet tips and he plunges through the bridge scaffolding to hang. But the rope breaks! Farquhar falls into the river, alive and free.

Bierce’s story details Farquhar’s escape down the river. He avoids being shot by soldiers on the bridge. With “preternaturally keen” senses, he takes in the unbearable beauty of life as the river carries him along: the sound of fish swimming, the iridescent hue of insects, the heft of jeweled sand.

Craving the sight and touch of his beloved wife, he leaves the river and heads toward his plantation on foot. At this point, the Reader begins to suspect that all is not quite “real” as Farquhar travels through the night in an unnaturally wild woods, comes upon a road with no sign of habitation, and cannot recognize the constellations in the starry sky.

But he does arrive home and his wife awaits him on the steps of his house with a smile of “ineffable joy.” He is about to embrace her when “he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck,” and he is dead, swinging from the timbers of Owl Creek bridge.

In Bierce’s tale, the matter of what really happened during those few seconds just before Farquhar’s death is left ambiguous. Was the journey home just the final fantasy of an overwrought brain? Or perhaps Farquhar’s spirit, compelled by the man’s love for his wife, traveled through some timeless space in order to appear to her and feel her touch just one last time?

My story, “An Occurrence on Interstate Five” has a contemporary setting and is less ambiguous than Bierce’s tale, but like his story, it’s about the power of love.

The theme of a final wish-fulfilling experience just before death can be found in many places. Two movies I’d recommend are Adrian Lyne’s “Jacob’s Ladder” (1990) and (arguably) Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988). And if you prefer film, Bierce’s story was filmed in 1962.