Twilight Zone Film Version!

Here is the link I found on youtube for the Twilight Zone film version of The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge that Hiromi talked about in class. It's so interesting to see the comparisons between the two, as I commented on Hiromi's post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zGFZ1UjSBw

Posted for Marina

Going into this story with the context of everything said and discussed in our first class period gave me an entirely new perspective on reading from the very beginning. From the moment of “he closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children” I just knew that the rest of the story was going to represent a vision encompassed by a tiny snapshot of the last moments of this doomed man’s life. I think this knowledge was guided partially by the conversations had during the first class about how the narrator can be deceptive and portray a twisted or falsified version of the truth, but also just from instincts picked up from previous stories books or media that I’ve been exposed to. However at the same time, the actual affirmation of what I had internally believed from the start which concluded the story with the line “Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.” was almost aggravating to me even though I completely predicted it. It was as if I knew something was coming but I subconsciously wanted the author not to have the nerve to actually follow through with his trickery. Even as I saw what was coming, I still wanted to believe the author’s words and that Farquhar’s escapades were in fact rooted in reality. 

One thing that I liked about that story is the set up with the conversation between Mrs. Farquhar and the soldier. This part really illustrated the broken timeline of the entire piece and was in fact a further tip off of the deceitful narrator in that the story clearly wasn’t following a consistent order of events.

Fooled Me Twice ...

            As I started reading An Occurrence on Owl Creek Bridge, I knew I should be skeptical of the narrator. Due to the nature and title of this class, “Truth, Lies and Literature,” and the biography we listened to on the first day of class, I thought that the story might be embedded with a few lies here or there. Regardless of my skeptical view of this article, as I started to read and annotate, I realized that I was taking the reading fairly seriously.

            The reading was very monotonous in the beginning with a lot of unnecessary detail that I was trying to keep track of. After awhile I felt like I had heard a similar story. When I got to the part of the story where, “Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was as one already dead,"  I realized that I had watched a video clip of this story in my high school Psychology class. After this realization, I started to feel very stupid and gullible. Even after having watched this video clip, I was tricked into believing the beginning of the story. Not only did I believe it, but it took me awhile before I realized that I had heard this story before. 

            After my realization, it was just laughable at how unrealistic the story seemed. Dodging several bullets in the water, freeing his hands, being able to see from such a far distance and regain his sensations all of a sudden … clearly there was something off. This reading made me realize that even if I have heard a punch line of a joke in the past, often times I find myself being stumped or shocked when I hear the same joke again. Even after seeing a movie, I find myself forgetting the plot twist. I have always been very gullible and I want to start reading with more of a skeptical eye and train myself to make sense of information before believing in it so quickly.

It is also difficult for me to believe that reading assignments given in a school context or things professors teach could contain false information and often times I do not question information that may seem inaccurate in my other classes as well.

In every Lie, a Grain of Truth

Having read this piece before, I came in with some knowledge of the story. With this in mind, I tried to look to the details of the story to see if I could pick up anything that I might have missed the first time I read it. On my second reading, I noticed a few things about Farquhar’s “escape” that I did not notice on my first read. This lead me to believe that his escape actually subtly chronicles his death.

I suspect that when one is being hanged, the first few moments are adrenaline filled and very stressful. This explains that during the beginning of Peyton’s story he has an absolutely superhuman perception of the world. He is able to see the dew on the leaves and hear the sounds of individual ripples in the water hitting his face, Things that arguable no one can do. As his escape progresses, the details become less vivid. This represents his body getting used to the hanging. His adrenaline recedes. When he looks back at the bridge, he sees everything as a blur. Contrast to earlier. Towards the end of his escape, he is very close to death. He begins to notice the soreness in his neck and swelling in his eyes. He also is unable to feel the road beneath his feet. This shows the loss of senses that he would feel as his brain lost oxygen. In his last moment of consciousness he approaches his wife in a delirium, and then, death.

How could I fall for that?

            As soon as the truth is revealed it seems like it was obvious in retrospect. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce lead me right along seemingly offering no clues that it was lying and then pulled the rug right out from under me and leaves me feeling frustrated and stupid. It is a very specific feeling of frustration because I felt as if I could have avoided it all together, which is why I feel stupid as well. Every detail that could have tipped me off to the falsehood of the story stands out glaringly once the truth is explicitly stated.

            In the beginning of chapter three when Bierce writes “As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was as one already dead.” Here Bierce is explicitly telling us that Farquhar is dead. He then misleads us into falsehood by telling us the “doomed man,” as he is called early in the story, awakens from the darkness. The author then tells the tale of Farquhar escape to safety and along the way, I blindly accepted numerous potentially false details. For example, I accepted Bierce’s description of dying, even though he obviously has never died before.

            Why did I take it for granted that the author knows what death is like and can accurately describe it? I innately trust people who appear official, and the author of a published short story being given to us in a college-level English class certainly appears trustworthy. Bierce played with my trust and covertly pushed the boundaries of what I would believe, and I never questioned him once. I blindly followed him to the end when he turns the story on its head and leaves me feeling blindsided. It all seemed so obvious after the fact though, which is why it was so frustrating.

I don't think the author could resist...

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.

You know, I knew exactly how it was going to end

... just by guessing the nature of the material we would read in this class.

So while reading “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” the first time around, I highlighted the parts that happened to stand out to me. The first was “death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him.” If I understand this correctly and not psychopathically, then I think it basically means that if you know that you’re dying, then you should be realistic about it. I consider myself to be a realist but death is my second biggest fear, so this sentence in the story really resonated with me and put my ideal perspective on death into 25 words. The next section that caught my attention was when the narrator says “what he heard was the ticking of his watch.” I just feel like this would happen to me too, if I knew that I was about to die. The last part I highlighted was when the narrator “remembered having read that gray eyes were keenest.” I honestly don’t know what I liked about that sentence except for the fact that I read it 4 times. I guess I just thought it was funny that the character with gray eyes was arguable the least keen character in this story.

Also I don’t know if I’m the only one that thinks this, but there’s something weirdly satisfying about the main character, or protagonist, dying in a story. I think that I’ve just become so fed up with all of the hero/heroine bestsellers that it’s almost refreshing to read a story that has a slightly more realistic ending than all of the other fiction. This story was enjoyable because it kept me thinking “what if”, but then ended exactly the way that I wanted, but not really because it was sad. Hmm. I’m not quite sure if any of that makes sense.
Bottom line: I liked it.

An Author's Audience Manipulation

The short story by Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, tells a tragic tale that twists our conception of truth through the narrator’s manipulation of our misguided trust.  Ab initio, an omniscient narrator explains Peyton Farquhar’s perception of being lynched execution-style off of a railroad bridge during the civil war era.  The first chapter of the short story builds the suspense leading up to the actual execution.  The first chapter eases the audience into trusting the narrator through his discreet but profound details.  For example, the narrator describes the condemned man’s recognition of the slow flow of the stream beneath the bridge.  By the conclusion of the first chapter the narrator has gained our trust by mentioning small details that implicate simple yet vivid truths.

In the second chapter the narrator provides background knowledge of the external forces that placed Peyton Farquhar in his dreadful position but requires us to make intuitive assumptions about his history.  When Peyton encounters a federal scout we discover that the “Yanks” are repairing the railroads and intend to hang anyone who disturbs the railroad grounds.  The narrator directly states Peyton’s southern opinions which strongly implies the explanation for Peyton’s condemnation.  Here the narrator extends his manipulative powers by reiterating his extraordinary knowledge of Peyton’s situation but requiring us to make assumption about what actually occurred; i.e. the narrator does not directly tell us how or why Peyton is executed.  By requiring the audience to make a simple and superficial abstract connection the author sets the table for his ultimate manipulation.

In the third and final chapter the narrator finally describes what the audience has been waiting for throughout the entire story, the execution.  The description of the execution focuses primarily on Peyton’s thoughts and perception, and not, however, on actual occurrences.  The narrator subtly slips into Peyton’s thoughts and out of reality.  The narrator uses his ability to enter Peyton’s thoughts to deceive the audience and convince them that Peyton survives his execution even though he does not.  Because the narrator describes the execution through the thoughts of Peyton Farquhar the author deceives the audience.  The narrator manipulates the audience by making the story seem so superficial and laid out.  The audience is unable to detect falsity when the execution strictly presents Peyton’s thoughts because the narrator manipulated our thoughts into believing in the superficiality of the story.  Our trust was misguided in that we trusted the narrator’s dedication to a superficial story.

Lie and be Lied to

“A dog comes with our hotel!” I enthusiastically told my friends who were staying in a separate hostel, “We have to feed and walk it and everything!” My friends acted surprised and a little skeptical but I proved our ownership of the dog by showing them the three hundred pictures I had taken of the beautiful Siberian husky. “That’s weird the landlords just left strangers to take care of their dog” one of the gullible fools commented. “Yeah, I know right” I responded, and proceeded to drop the subject and enjoy my day in Scotland. A couple days later my hotel-mates and I dropped the bomb that the owners did not, in fact, leave us with their new puppy, and though we had seen, pet and had a photo-shoot with this dog, we weren’t taking care of it. Their reactions were less than satisfying with nothing more than an “oh… okay”, while I was almost on the floor with sore ribs.

It was this moment that I thought to myself, “why did I tell them I was taking care of a dog?” It’s not very clever, funny or effective in any purpose…so why did I do it? There’s a certain satisfaction in “fooling” someone, or in other words, lying to him or her, that doesn’t have to do with my particularly childish sense of humor. Knowing the truth while the person in front of you does not puts the liar on a higher plane of knowledge, which for some reason ends up being comical. The comedy can stem from a range of events, mostly involving the reactions of the party being lied to, but fundamentally comes from their plain ignorance. We lie to others to bask in their lack of knowledge. So if we, as humans, enjoy fooling, or lying to, people, why do we also enjoy being lied to?

As I finished reading An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, chills raced down my spine when the story was flipped on its head. The fact of his actual immediate death shifted the story completely from events transpiring over a full day to a stream of consciousness lasting no more than three minutes. This made me think about movies like Shutter Island, and Inception (semi-spoiler alert) whose endings shift the perspectives of the movie from the very first second. These are my favorite types of movies, books and short stories: tales with twists. So, while I love fooling others, I also love being fooled because of the satisfaction of enlightenment, or of the sudden realization of the truth I gain.

Three Deceptions

Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is divided into three sections, and within each section there can be found a deception. The first lie occurs on the third page, where Peyton convinces himself that he can survive his execution if he can just free his hands. The second falsehood is presented by the disguised Union soldier, who plants the idea into Peyton's hand to try to burn down the bridge. The final, and largest deception is what Bierce does to the reader, presenting an entire narrative in which Peyton escapes, only for this fantasy to come crashing down at the end.

Both the self-deception of Peyton and the soldier’s deception are revealed to the audience. We are told that he is a “doomed man” on the second page, and on the third page we are told that the gray-clad soldier is in fact a Federal scout. It is through these lies that Bierce is able to gain the trust of the reader. By cluing us into these deceptions, we are made to believe that we are knowledgeable, and we have an almost omniscient view of the story, or at the very least one far more informed than that of Peyton.

Another interesting impact of the third lie is that it allows the reader to experience the exact same emotions that Peyton must have felt upon discovering that he had been duped. By putting the reader through the same experience, Bierce makes it possible for the reader empathize with Peyton to a higher degree. In a way the reader undergoes the same self-delusion as Peyton by believing it is possible at all to escape from such a hopeless situation.

Fool Me Once

When I read An Occurrence on Owl Creek Bridge, I never questioned that the events taking place might not actually be happening. But looking back on it, why wouldn’t I question it? Why would I think the rope miraculously breaking would be a plausible event to take place? But, in the world of fiction anything can happen, anything is possible, especially for the protagonist. The main character can make an extraordinary escape, or survive a fall from a hundred foot drop, or dodge every bullet the bad guy shoots no matter how close in range they are. They can do anything. I expect them to do the impossible. I expect that they will somehow have managed to cling onto a branch after falling off the side of a cliff. I expect that the bullet that hit them didn’t kill them—of course it only got lodged in the small book they happened to have in their front pocket. There was some false security I had in the protagonist that they at least wouldn’t die, even if other important characters around them did. But, Bierce manipulated that little universal truth that I clung to.

A few months ago I read the final book in a trilogy (I won’t name it… spoilers?) and it defied my expectations regarding how a series “should” end. The female protagonist—the main character—died. She was shot three times while saving the day. Despite my initial shock, I wasn’t heartbroken because in the back of my mind I thought: “she’s still alive, she’s injured and almost dead, but she’ll survive”. Because that’s what the main character does in the works of fiction… even if she’s been shot three times. No matter what happens to them somehow they survive. So I kept reading, waiting for the moment when she miraculously returned from the “dead”. She lay in a hospital bed and the male protagonist sat next to her obviously heartbroken. And I knew the moment was coming: he would take her hand, beg her to survive, and she would wake up. But she never did.

I was furious. I felt like the author had somehow betrayed me. It was some unwritten law, some unspoken truth that the protagonist—the hero, the main character—survives. That was the hope and the lie I clung to.

I suppose after reading the above-mentioned book I should have realized that my universal truth about protagonists was a lie, a little manipulation I was meant to find security in. But Bierce fooled me again. Reading An Occurrence on Owl Creek Bridge I never doubted that Farquhar’s noose had snapped, that he managed to free his hands from their ties despite being underwater, that every bullet shot at him missed, and that he walked all day through woods he didn’t know despite literally having been hanged earlier that day. I didn’t doubt it because it seemed possible for the protagonist.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Hopefully I’ll learn that I can’t always trust my expectations.