The Experience of a Lifetime: Philosophical Reflections on a Narrative Device of Ambrose Bierce (Critical Essay‪)‬

In his famous short story, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce introduces an unnamed narrative device to shocking good effect. The device occurs in a liminal setting; that is, it happens at the intense sensory threshold between life and death. The occurrence is a mental projection, a feverish fantasy in the surging near-death consciousness of a condemned man. In the protagonist's pre-mortem heightened awareness, objective time gives way to a radically slower subjective time, and in the space of moments, he fantasizes a flashforward of escape and survival. Thus, a key element of the device involves a distention of time. The story concludes when the subjective moment comes to a sudden, crude end, and the reader is brought back to the world of objective, "real" time. The protagonist is dead, and the reader experiences a range of reactions: the element of surprise, the promise and loss of hope, the tragedy of death, the ultimate coherence of objective reality, and acknowledgement of Bierc e's carefully constructed deception. The story begins rather abruptly. Before readers have a chance to get their bearings, Bierce throws them in the midst of an extreme predicament.