Owl Creek Bridge Diction

War is a brutal, bloody battlefield from which no one returns unscathed. Nonetheless, there are those who believe war to be a glorious honor, a bedtime story filled with gallant heroes, a scuffle fought an ocean and several countries away. In “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce and “August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury, the authors seek to convey the devastation that comes from romanticizing war by using impersonal and ironic diction.

Bierce begins his story in Northern Alabama at Owl Creek Bridge, looking in on a man bound in ropes and a noose surrounded by soldiers sporting weapons and Federal Army uniforms. The dead man standing is a civilian, described as a planter and a gentleman, the kind one would

not expect to have his neck captured in hemp. However, the soldiers yield no hints about his crime as, “It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the centre of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot plank which traversed it” (74).

A man’s execution is moments away from happening yet these men guarding the gravesite seem to care not for anything outside of their line of sight, regardless of its consequence. Bierce’s choice of impersonal diction in this passage draws the attention to the soldiers’ lack of concern for this man’s fate, demonstrating a perfect example of good soldiering. These men who “merely blockaded” entrance to the execution are not openly paying any mind to the hanging about to begin, which is referred to as something “occurring at the centre of the bridge,” because it was not their “duty” to think of what happened outside of their assigned task. Despite being within walking distance of this condemned man, no one is overtly uneasy about the presence of Death waiting to claim its prize. To these soldiers, to this war, the gentleman’s death will be but an occurrence, no more exciting than an

autumn leaf falling at the end of its life; the bridge is but a structure, no more special than the doors to a mortuary after a funeral; their “duty” is but another order given by their commanding officer in a time and place where military gain outranks morals. Bierce sees this blind loyalty to duty as the mark of one who believes war to be a cut and dry battlefield and so he writes these soldiers as impersonal men, showing readers the disturbing truth behind a good soldier.
There is no innocence or excuse in allowing war’s atrocities to continue with neither question nor comment, but what is worse than ignoring bloodshed is justifying death for the sake of victory, however small the sacrifice, however significant the success. In a flashback to the events leading up to Owl Creek Bridge, Bierce reveals the condemned man to be Peyton Farquhar, a Southern plantation owner with a deep longing for the glory, which only accompanies wartime. He sees his opportunity when a man wearing a grey uniform stops in his home for rest and talks about the Yanks’ plans to repair the railroads, including the one passing over Owl Creek. Upon hearing this, Peyton inquires about the details of his self-assigned mission. “ ‘Suppose a man—a civilian and student of hanging—should elude the picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel,’ said Farquhar, smiling, ‘what could he accomplish?’ ” (76). Not only does Farquhar long for honor in taking up arms with the secessionists, but he is willing to murder in the name of the Southern cause. Based on the news this grey-uniformed man has told him, the plantation owner devises a course of action and reduces the lives of men stationed at Owl Creek Bridge to little more than an objective in his honorable, self-assigned mission. Even more disturbing, Farquhar, this “student of hanging” speaks of killing a man with a smile as if calling the man “the sentinel” strips away his humanity in the same fashion enslaving a man did. Farquhar owns slaves on the same property he raises his children. Farquhar hangs men with the same hands he uses to embrace his wife. Farquhar speaks of pride and love for the South with the same mouth he uses to discuss death of the man—no, “sentinel” at Owl Creek Bridge, 30 miles from his home and practically another world away. Bierce’s impersonal diction again paints a disconcerting picture, this time one of Farquhar and his actions accompanied by the old saying, “All’s fair in love and war.” When morally heinous acts are condoned, humans are reduced to targets of duty and humanity is mutated into a devastating force of Death.
While Bierce’s diction criticizes the war-blinded simplification of men and death into obstacles and necessity of duty, Bradbury’s diction calls attention to the irony of life that remains after war hits home.

On the morning of August 4, 2026, a lone house stands among the ruins of Allendale, California, serving the ghosts of its residents and, “Until this day, how well the house had kept its peace” (88). In the wake of atomic devastation, the technologically enhanced house is all that remains of human life in the city and it continues function as it was programmed to do, when war did not knock at its doorstep. Inside the house, life goes on for the artificial voices, the automated appliances, the motorized robots, but past the house’s windows lies nuclear death, starving creatures, a war that has found its way home. Bradbury’s ironic use of “peace” is not lost among the ashes and soot of Allendale’s battlefield. Despite the annihilation surrounding the house, it does not shut itself down nor does it express concern over lack of human activity inside of it. The house ignores the war it has found itself in and strives to maintain appearances, keeping its interior cycling through an average day before the bomb came and following the course of action where that which is out of sight is out of mind. In this sense, Bradbury’s words also apply to the world at large where war is only a threat if its weapons and blood dirty the front door. As long as soldiers are overseas and the

violence takes place well beyond the country’s borders, war is merely a news report containing numbers and loud noises. How easy it is to keep one’s peace when protected by walls of enabled ignorance. However, the house’s peace is disturbed when the dead family’s starving dog enters through the front door. Smelling the automatic lunch, it begins to frantically spin and bite its tail until it drops dead. An hour later, cleaning robots, “Delicately sensing decay at last, the regiments of mice hummed out as softly as blown gray leaves in an electrical wind” (89). With the house’s lack of acknowledgment of the atomic warzone beyond its walls comes a lack of sentiment for the dead family pet on the kitchen floor. Only when the smell of decay “delicately” creeps into its sensors do the cleaning robots “softly” come out of hiding to methodically dispose of the source. Though Bradbury writes of small, dainty robotic cleaning mice, “the regiments of mice” clear the corpse by nibbling away at the dog piece by rotten piece until its remains are all dumped into the house’s incinerator. In this short story, technology has not been developed to the point of artificial emotion and so the robots are no better than soldiers following the duty they have been programmed to carry out, sparing no thought for the inhumane implications or the ironic descriptions of their actions. After the nuclear bomb, what little organic life survived holds no value for the house and although Bradbury personifies it and its artificial inhabitants, there is no trace of humanity left in Allendale, California; there is no life after war hits home.
Ambrose Bierce’s choice of impersonal diction reveals the bloody truth behind enemy lines, asserting the claim that war is but an excuse for humanity to commit atrocities and place accountability upon duty. Ray Bradbury’s choice of ironic diction creates the illusion that life in a warzone is normal after the battle is over while exposing the fact that there is no normality after war. Romanticizing war as a glorious service or a removed occurrence is the same as beautifying a corpse and shoving it deep in a closet; it depicts a lovely scene until decomposition sets in and the skeleton in the closet demands attention, but by then it is too late to do anything about the lingering stench. The devastation of war never truly disappears and in painting war with a pretty brush, we ensure future devastation to come.