“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” stands out as Ambrose Bierce's career defining short story. As a Union veteran of the Civil War, Bierce undertook a writing career that reflected his own life-changing experience in the war. Suffering a sever injury in the war, Bierce's fiction is a cynical reflection of the arbitrary death destruction he witnessed in the conflict. Bierce invested his own work with an often darkly humorous tone to their Horror settings. Working as a reporter after the war, Bierce's work developed an authentic realism. With its famous twist ending, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” became Bierce's best expression of Horror and humorous wit that defined his career.
While his most famous piece of fiction, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” was not Bierce's only short story. Bierce was a prolific author who's work spanned everything from news reporting, to memoirs, to short stories. Nearly all of Bierce's short stories shared some element of either the Civil War, Horror, or a twist ending. Both “A Horseman in the Sky” and “Chickamuga” contain twist endings to match the sudden, final death of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”. Both too are similar tales of Horror set in the American Civil War.
Bierce's mastery of the short story form and twist ending arose from necessity. Nearly all of Bierce's short stories/articles were written to be printed in newspapers. The newspaper story format gave Bierce little space to work with. Thus, Bierce was known for his short plots, austere language, and memorable tales that end with a punch. The stories were meant to entertain casual readers who would find them in the daily newspaper. Bierce's work then was not intended as literary masterpieces but entertaining prose anyone could appreciate.
Being so prolific, there is no surprise some of Bierce's work was better than the rest. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” despite being so short, stands out to this day as Bierce's masterpiece. Peyton Farquhar's death has been examined, analyzed, and parodied a thousand times in popular culture. The end of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is so ingrained in literary memory that the adjective “Biercian” was developed to describe endings similar to it.
While “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is synonymous with Bierce's name, Ambrose Bierce's mastery of the short story format can also be appreciated in the rest of his works of Civil War Horror.
