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An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge: And A Horseman in the Sky (A Tale Blazer book)

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These two short stories by Ambrose Bierce present two agonizingly personal conflicts of soldiers confronted with death while engaged in the throes of the American Civil War. In "A Horesman in the Sky" a young Virginian who decides to fight for the North finds himself unavoidably having to shoot his father, who is fighting for the South. In "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" a Confederate sympathizer condemned to die by hanging stands at the edge of a bridge with the noose around his neck. As his executioner gives the signal and his body swings out over the river, the rope frays and breaks. In a dreamlike state he struggles to free himself in the raging water, amidst gunfire from the soldiers above. Miraculously he is carried downstream, makes it to shore, and travels on foot until, near exhaustion, he arrives home, greeted by his ecstatic wife and child. But there the illusion ends--the rope has not broken and the soldier's body swings motionlessly in the breeze above the river, under the dispassionate gaze of the Union soldiers. In "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" Ambrose Pierce plays with our perception of time and reality, eerily forshadowing the stream-of-consciousness writers of the 20th century. Like them, he presents a complex and troubling view of the ravages of war, a bleak landscape where that which is held most dear is shattered.