Ambrose Bierce Post

Rich Hoggan
Ambrose Pierce Blog Posting
01-08-11

While reading Ambrose Bierce's short story, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, the follow quote caught my attention. "No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war" (362). We for the most part consider eros or love to be one of the strongest of emotions that defines us. But there is another emotion that defines us -- service to our country. While it could also be argued that service in such respects is not an emotion by definition, it's an emotional experience. Yet at the same time, while we might not all be soldiers, we still feel it in our hearts to make such sacrifices willingly, no matter what the costs might be.

To take the concept deeper, the ending of the quote offers up more information as to the argument being made. Bierce writes "…that all is fair in love and war" (362). The interpretation I make from this quote is that of showing the length to which we go when in love, whether to the person we love or to our country. Unfortunately we can't escape the fact that this short story was written during a time when realism was a literary expression. That said, another interpretation I take from the ending of this quote is that perils exist in love. These perils can come in many forms but in the story, the main character was overtaken by a mis-leading love and it was this mis-leading love that ultimately did him in.

Bierce has a way of making the reader believe in the main character but at the same time, Bierce is well capable of taking the reader on a roller coaster ride. Looking at the overall structure of the story, Bierce creates quite a few of these twists and turns in that we are lead to believe that the main character faces a different outcome only to realize our original thoughts turned out to be true. A quote that I found on a website lends insight into why Bierce has such an abrasive writing style. The quote reads, "What he saw and experienced in the war had the most profound effect on Bierce. In addition to the harsh realities of war, Bierce's engagement to childhood sweetheart Bernice ("Fatima") Wright was broken off during the war, adding to his disillusionment. All his experiences in the war are commonly seen as the source of his cynical realism" (www.biercephile.com - The Life of Bierce). Considering this quote, it's almost as though we are taken on the same journey Bierce went on through out his life when reading this story by the very nature of the twists and turns faced by the main character. He gives us the "low hanging fruit" in the form of a potentially different ending but then he forces us to realize that we have to live with the ending prescribed in the initial establishing of the story.

Lastly it's important that we remember that while there might be an overarching genre attached to these literary works, it's the author's own personal experiences that adds a sense of realism that gives us the ability to see the character through to the end and to examine our own lives as we examine the lives the characters.