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Research paper over literary elements an occurrence at owl creek bridge
Short analysis of an occurence at owl creek bridge
Review of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
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The short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce was an incredible work of fiction. The choice to tell this story from an omniscient point of view is what made this story phenomenal. Because we are experiencing all of the emotions that the condemned man felt, we are drawn into his private world. If we had heard this from a more traditional point of view, it wouldn't have been nearly as touching or personal as it was. The way the story was told gave us the impression that we were there, floating above it, and witnessing every moment. This story was about a man named Peyton Farquhar. He was a well-off southern planter from Alabama. We know this because his family was "old and highly-respected" and he was a slave owner (par.8). He was a family man with a wife and children. Peyton Farquhar was very loyal to the Southern cause (par.8). He got caught up in a war that he should not have been involved in because he was not enlisted in the Confederate army. He decided to intervene in a plan to overtake the Owl Creek Bridge and was caught and hanged. Since the setting of this story took place in Alabama, we know that there was a great deal of animosity between the North and South. Peyton asked a soldier that approached him and his wife about news from the front while his wife ran to get him some water. The soldier told Peyton that someone could possibly set a fire under the bridge because of all the dried driftwood there and that the bridge was only guarded by one person. We know that this was an attempt by the union to eliminate a steadfast southern supporter because of the last line, "He was a Federal scout." (par.17) I find it very odd that the couple would be so eager to speak with this soldier u... ... middle of paper ... ...ything in between your two marks. This is how you will know that Peyton did not actually "die" until the last sentence of the story. This is how it reads: "The sergeant stepped aside, he (Peyton) feels a stunning blow upon the back of his neck: a blinding white light blazes all about him, with a sound like the shock of a cannon-then all is darkness and silence! Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken nick, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek Bridge." Everything that happened between these two statements happened in a split second. From the time the sergeant stepped aside and the descent began until the time his neck snapped only took a couple of seconds. This is what they mean by "my life flashed before my eyes." In Peytons' minds eye, he escaped his executioners and found his way home to his wife and his happy ending.
According to Baybrook, “Peyton Farquhar believes -- as do the readers -- that he has escaped execution and, under heavy gunfire, has made his way back home” (Baybrook). One of Bierce’s main means to achieve this goal of forcing the reader to buy into his delusion is ‘time’. Because ‘time’ is utilized to calibrate human experiences, it becomes obscure, altered and split in times of extreme emotional disturbance. The time that is required for hanging Farquar seems to be indefinite, however, Bierce goes the extra mile and indicates that there is a certain ‘treshold of death’ that lingers beyond recognition. When it is exceeded, it results in a distorted and blurred pe...
Particularly, Peyton Farquhar was an innocent civilian and a family man willing to help the southern cause. In part II of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” a Confederate soldier stopped at Peyton’s plantation and discussed about burning down the bridge. The soldier implied that Peyton should do it. As a result, Peyton went down to the bridge in an attempt to burn the bridge. Afterwards, we learned that the Confederate soldier was a federal scout and that he had framed
Out of all the stories I have read so far in class, I found this story the most interesting and realistic piece. It never occurred to me that thoughts such as those mentioned in the story could actually be going through a dieing man’s mind. In fact, I show even more ignorance in that I have never thought about what is it truly like to experience a process of expected death. This kind of tragedy once happened on a day-to-day basis. Imagine all the other elaborate emotions going through the minds of others dieing. Bierce did a great job in putting true emotion into this story. I along with most of my class members agreed that we had no idea Peyton’s escape home did not occur at all until the final words of this story. For an author to create something so realistically disguised until the bitter end is truly an amazing accomplishment.
In writing this story, Bierce is commenting on war itself and the contrast between this romanticized tale of heroism and the gruesome reality the hundreds of thousands of men had to face, and still have to face to this very day. The true horrors of war are never normally publicized, and this is why the populace is willing to go and fight. In the case of Peyton Farquhar, this ignorance lead to his blind patriotism, which in turn lead to his death. As the narrator relates to the reader: “Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with the gallant army [...] and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction.” (Bierce 2). The aforementioned quote is most definitely an affirmation of the grandeur of the military, and this is the perspective that Peyton Farquhar and many men shared. It is this illusion of grandeur that corrupts many men (and women) to head out and die in horrible
We realize that Peyton never really escaped, he was seeing his life flash before his eyes and the reader was right there with him. As stated by Peter Stoicheff in ‘Something Uncanny’ : The Dream Structure in Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” “somehow the reader is made to participate in the split between imagination and reason, to feel that the escape is real while he knows it is not”(349). The reader wants to believe he survived and doesn’t realize the reality actually happening due to the altering of perspectives on Bierce’s part. There is evidence that shows that Bierce wanted the reader to see the reality that comes with your mind playing
Lucy Bednar explains in her criticism that Bierce uses three different voices throughout his story. In the first part of the story Bierce set up the scene. There is a man, Peyton, with a noose around his neck about to be hanged by the Northern soldiers during the civil war. Peyton is barely standing on a plank of the bridge and there are soldiers all over the place ready to
The authors, Ambrose Bierce of 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' and Edger Allan Poe of 'The Tell Tale Heart' have unique styles to pull the reader into the story. Both authors use unreliable narrator and imagery to allow the reader to picture and follow the narrator's way of thinking. In the Tell Tale Heart, the man is very repetitious and his psychotic behavior is what intrigues the overall dark madness of The Tell Tale Heart. In Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Bierce uses illusions to allow the reader to follow wherever his ideas lead which also intrigues the overall dark madness effect.
In the fictional short story of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” the author Ambrose Bierce does a superior job of making the mind of a reader wonder. Throughout the story, the reader is able to watch and experience the hanging of a local plantation owner Peyton Farquhar. The story contains three parts that show the present, a flash back to the past, and into an altered reality of Farquhar’s “getaway.” The story of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” demonstrates the theme of how the nature of time is free-flowing. Bierce uses three elements of fiction to successfully support the story in its free flow of time. Ambrose Bierce uses the setting, point of view, and plot structure to help organize the theme and the story’s unique elements.
Farquhar had many different attitudes toward the civil War. Most of which had a bad prospective on life itself. Peyton closed his eyes in order to have last second thoughts of his
In the story, Farqhar was cut off from his family and friends, in his attempt to help to confederacy by destroying Owl Creek Bridge, which was a major supply line for the Union Army. The second he was cut off from his peers by the Union, he was ultimately doomed, because of this naturalistic law. In the story, he says he was trying to escape to get back to the safety of his family, when he says, “If I could free my hands, I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and swimming vigorously reach the bank, take to the woods and get away
The story starts out as Peyton Farquhar is about to get hung. Somehow, he gets free with a snap of the rope. Throughout the story Peyton Farquhar talks about how the soldiers are after Peyton and continues about his escape. As Peyton approaches his wife, after getting home of traveling all night, the story he had told was a dream and he is hung.
“The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him.” (Bierce 472), he was joyous with fact that he was fortunate enough to not get caught. By washing ashore he never felt more alive or lucky he could now return to his family which he desperately wanted. As he makes his escape into the woods he eventually finds his house and “...sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him.” (Bierce 473) he ran with all his might to embrace his perfect and always beautiful wife. Before he could kiss his wife “...he feels a stunning blow upon the back of his neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon…” (Bierce 473) Peyton Farquhar is dead. Bierce as a realist brought the readers to a fantasy world which is deceptively similar to the real world, and shows that in reality our dreams and hopes won’t run the course we expect them to. Realism is accepting the real situation and being ready to deal with it
While the story is based on a realistic plot, and even set up as a piece of historical fiction, it soon takes a drastic turn towards romanticism. When Peyton is hung off the bridge just as he is dropping to his death, the rope breaks letting him drop into the water and begin to escape by swimming for his life. This action in itself illustrates classic romanticism, as it is highly unrealistic that Peyton would have survived the impact of the rope to his neck as he dropped off the bridge. This goes on further as he survives his plunge into the water, releases himself of the ropes which bound him, and then manages to swim away to safety while being shot at by a troop of soldiers.
This makes mood one of the greatest aspects of a story, because in literature, mood is the emotional feeling that is created in the reader. The author can also alter the mood in their own way with the use of diction and tone. Mood is created in the story with the use of negative, positive, and any other attitude words. In the beginning of the story, Bierce writes with a third person view of the scene that is occurring. He provides minimal detail of any emotion of the characters, except to comment on the absence of emotion to put emphasis on it. “Staring stonily”, “motionless”(481). The words he used to express the soldiers standing conveyed the idea that they were unemotional yet proper and took the hanging of Peyton Farquhar very seriously. The idea of the soldiers “staring”(481) express’ a distinctive importance set on them being detached from the event. “Formal and unnatural position,”(481) “etiquette” and “deference”(483). Thus, portraying that the soldiers were stone-faced and stern, and that Peyton must have broken an important rule in order to be awarded this punishment. However, it is not until the second section that the reader finds out that he is a criminal, so it must be assumed that Peyton does not deserve his punishment. The author initially described Peyton with complimentary words. “No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if
In "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "The Story of an Hour," the authors use similar techniques to create different tones, which in turn illicit very distinct reactions from the reader. Both use a third person narrator with a limited omniscient point of view to tell of a brief, yet significant period of time. In "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," Bierce uses this method to create an analytical tone to tell the story of Farquhar's experience just before death. In "The Story of an Hour," Chopin uses this method to create an involved, sympathetic tone to relay the story of Mrs. Mallard's experience just before death. These stories can be compared on the basis of their similar points of view and conclusions as well as their different tones.