Ambrose Bierce's Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge

The story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce uses techniques such as flashback and ethos, or emotion, to show that life isn’t as fair as some believe. Bierce uses flashback when Peyton Farquhar, the main character of the story, is being hanged. His

Farquaad says, "Arrest them both and now, that makes me king!" The dragon, sent by Donkey, swallows Farquaad coming in through the window.

basement, somewhere north of the furnace and east of the root-cellar, where Clayt and Ella’s

the army. He sees the man and loads his rifle. Just as he is going to

When Katsa fishes him out, she and Bitterblue dress the wound in his shoulder, slump him over a horse, and set out for the king was not dead and the only one who could kill him was knocked out.

Soldiers in battle often do not see the big picture of what is going on.

The author wants to draw us into the story; they want us to feel like we are in the

“Owl Creek Bridge” is a short story set during the American Civil War. There are three different part within this short story. Part one being about Peyton Farquhar standing on a railroad bridge, twenty feet above water. Part two opens with the narrator introducing Peyton who in a which is a wealthy slave owner. He had spoken with a soldier who had informed him about Union troops repairing the bridge over Owl creek. Part three begins as Farquhar falls through the bridge, into the water below. Throughout this story Bierce, the author, throws in many foreshadowing, warning or indication of a future event, occurrences that really get your mind ticking.

One way this is achieved is the emphasis placed on the physical objects the soldiers carry. Because the story takes place in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, why the characters carry what they carry becomes an important part of the story. Every item must serve a purpose. They carry rifles to kill. They carry helmets and rain ponchos for protection. They carry

As Farquhar plummets from the bridge, he loses consciousness; then pain awakens him. A loud splash awakens him further and he realises his noose is broken as he falls into the stream. He sees a light flicker, fade, then brighten as he struggles to rise to the surface. In fear that he will be shot when he breaks the surface, he frees himself from his bounds and stays underwater a bit longer. When he rises, he sees the Northern soldiers still on the bridge and a sentinel fires his rifle at him twice. The lieutenant orders his men to fire to he dives into the water and removes a piece of metal from his neck. Returning for air, he gets shot at by the sentinels again; then he is shot at by a cannon. Suddenly he enters a disorienting whirl and ends up on the bank. When a cannon shoots at him again, he runs through the forest back home; it takes all day but the thought of his wife and children encourages him. As he nears the gates of his house he sees his wife and goes to embrace her. But before he reaches her, he feels a sharp pain in his neck and a sees a blinding white light. Then he is engulfed by utter darkness and silence. He is dead, and his damaged body is hanging from Owl Creek

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” takes place after the South had ceded from the union and the American Civil War began. Peyton Farquhar is a slave owner who tries to burn down the bridge disconnect the Union from the South and fails. He fantasizes for the majority of the novella of escaping the grasp of the union and returning to his family through a perilous tale that is similar to the lengths slaves went to when trying to escape their owners. Slaves would become “fatigued, footsore, [and] famished” while trying to

That turns out to be a mistake on his part and gets killed by Tybalt.

After going back and reading through the story again, I noticed several clues Bierce peppered throughout the great escape to foreshadow Farquhar’s death. For example, Bierce kept mentioning how Farquhar was feeling pain in his neck and how his mind was getting more and more lost, saying that he had fallen asleep while walking. Another abnormality I noticed was how the soldiers kept firing shots at Farquhar while he was “escaping,” and they never managed to actually shoot him. The shots fired from the weapons are actually ceremonial after death, and they were fired after Farquhar was

However, in reality, he was hung the moment he fell off the board. In this part, Time isn’t even in a fixed position; the story mentions some parts of Farquhar’s imagination happening “exceedingly rapidly,” and “ages