SOURCE: Powers, James G., S.J. “Freud and Farquhar: ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’?” Studies in Short Fiction 19, no. 3 (summer 1982): 278-81.

In the following essay, Powers applies a Freudian interpretation to “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.”

Much has been written of Ambrose Bierce's predilection for bizarre topics—his penchant for “gratuitous horror and meaningless annihilation,”¹ his cynicism rooted in an idealism which collided with the “crudities of the Gilded Age” at the turn of the century²; his love-hate relationship to war; finally, his pioneer treatment of the “clock of consciousness” in a relentless time world. In this last respect, John Crane observes, alluding to “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” that the hero, Peyton Farquhar, “has imposed a temporary reality, the desires of the heart, upon the true reality within the swollen moments of his post-mortem consciousness.”³

It is these “desires of the heart,” welling up...