The author could not resist hinting at the nature of the story. Five words in Ambrose Beirce’s “An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge” allude to the twist at the end of the story so obviously that I find it hard not to believe the author is not chuckling just a little bit as he wrote them.
“He was a Federal scout.” The words have significance to the plot; giving the reader some insight as to how, perhaps, our Southern planter Peter Farquhar was caught attempting arson on the Owl Creek Bridge. That, however, is not the reason these five words stood out to me. This sentence stood out because it took readers in a sharp turn. Up until this point, all clues had led to the belief that the soldier was in support of the Southern states. Farquhar and his wife had already been identified as starkly Confederate, and had not only greeted the officer cordially but even offered him something to drink. When the conversation leads to Owl Creek Bridge, my own mind tracked it there, and in doing so reflected back on the first chapter. The scout ceased to be a character in my mind and became, instead, a vessel for Farquhar to hear about the bridge, and a possible way for him to help the Southern cause. Then the scout was forced back into my mind as this turn of events changed the conversation from a dialogue between two Southern sympathizers to a carefully placed trap that Faquhar then fell into (no pun intended).
This train of thought took my mind away from the conversation at hand as I filled in the blanks between chapters one and two, even though the setting of both characters and the conversation had not changed in any way. With twenty/twenty hindsight, this moment foreshadows chapter three and the end of the story, when the text, and the reader's point of view, plummets down into the river, dodges bullets and escapes, even though not a single character ever left the bridge.
I agree with you comment about twenty/twenty hindsight. Once the truth is revealed, you can go back and easily pick out each time Ambrose Bierce deceives the reader. Before the big twist, though, these obvious tricks blend in naturally with the story. I think this speaks to our trust of the author and demonstrates how blindly we read literature. I tend to simply track the plot and characters, rather than grapple with the details.
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