An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

A man is about to be executed by army officers. The man that is about to be executed is a civilian (probably a planter). Before he is executed the man thinks about his wife and children and how he might be able to escape.

Peyton Farquhar is a southern slave owner with Confederate sympathies, but is unable to enlist in the Confederate Army although he really wants to fight. A Confederate soldier stops by Farquhar’s house one day for water and tells him about the Union Army at Owl Creek Bridge and how they are rebuilding the railroads. The Union Army threatens to hang anyone who interferes with its progress.

Farquhar and the soldier covertly discuss how the bridge might be taken down. The Confederate soldier turns out to be a Union spy. The rope breaks and Farquhar falls into the stream. He gets the rope off of his wrists and takes the noose from around his neck.

He swims to the surface and finds that his senses seem very acute. The soldiers begin to shoot at him. Farquhar begins to swim with the current and gets caught in a whirlpool which throws him onto the bank. He makes it back home to his wife, but as he is about to embrace her, the reader learns that the entire escape was a fantasy and Farquhar dies.