An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge Comparison

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James Thurber and Ambrose Bierce both show identical connections with their short stories. In the short story, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Peyton Farquhar is on the railroad bridge about to be hanged with northern soldiers around. Right before he dies, he starts to think about his wife and kids, and why is he there. He uses his imagination thoroughly in the story and we find out that it was all a dream and he died in the end. In The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Walter also uses his imagination to be better in life. Daydreaming helps ease the minds of both of these main characters. In these two stories, the protagonist’s show how dreaming can help get out of the real life as well as boosting self-esteem. Being happy is what the main …show more content…

The setting of the story took place in Northern Alabama during the Civil War. Peyton was getting hung because a northern spy found out that Peyton was going to interfere with the bridge after being told not to due to an ongoing attack. While standing on the railroad bridge platform about to be hanged, he starts daydreaming about his wife and kids, “Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her, he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon- then all the darkness and silence!”. We learn that throughout the story, he was daydreaming rather than being in reality. It seemed real until he was hung in the end, “…his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge”. Ambrose Bierce was a soldier in the civil war at the time, afterward, he became a newspaper writer. This shows how his life connects and impacts the story well through because how the time he wrote the story connects to the time he was a writer in the civil

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