Heart Breaking Film, By Ambrose Bierce And Directed By Robert Enrico

On this unique day in Alabama, Peyton fahrquhar found himself in a very compromising position. Peyton found himself in on the edge of the owl creek bridge standing on the end of the board with a noose tied around his neck. Peyton was surrounded by many army soldiers, many of them were also armed with rifles. Peyton described his surroundings a being very rural, with a swiftly moving stream below the very bridge they were standing on. Time is a variable component, yet it is additionally of principal significance throughout everyday life. Time is man's strategy for estimation, recording history and checking minutes in a person’s life. In Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" the story of the catch of an Alabama warrior by the Northern armed force loans emotional and less than ideal impacts to his last hours.

Ambrose Bierce’s short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” and the film version directed by Robert Enrico share some similarities but mostly the differences between the two works. Both the short story and film can be compared and contrasted in relation to the emotion, detail and perspective. One is at an advantage, reading the short story before seeing the film because the story gives a better idea of what is happening and who the protagonist really is. In other words, the short story helps in providing the reader with key details that are not mentioned in the film.

In “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, Bierce starts her short story on the edge with Peyton Farquhar, a 35 year old planter from the south, standing on Owl Creek Bridge with his hands tied behind his back and a noose around his neck. There are soldiers from the north surrounding him. Two soldiers, one on each side of him, take away the plank in which he is standing on. Falling to the water, Farquhar focuses his last thoughts on his family, while also having hopes of freeing his hands and diving into the water below.

imaginative words to help set the mood of the narrative. In the tale, the character Peyton Farquhar is in the middle of his hanging when he suddenly escapes the noose and soldiers and runs off to his family only to find he never escapes and is dreaming. The theme that helps tie the overall concept of the story is a person can not assume everyone is on ones side. With the use of Bierce’s serene and detached tone, literary devices, and theme, he creates an eerie and deceptive story that attracts the reader's attention to keep on reading.

"He became conscious of a new disturbance." (Bierce 2) The narrator explains this new disturbance as the sound of a “hammer upon the anvil.” (Bierce 2) The narrator has the reader believing this disturbance is a loud, obnoxious, sharp ringing type of noise. “What he heard was the ticking of his watch.” (Bierce 2) The narrator goes into great detail about Farquhar’s hanging as though he is in Farquhar’s mind, almost as if the reader could sense what it’s like to be hung from a noose. “Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of his body and limbs.” (Bierce 3) At this point there is a sudden turn in the story, the narrator wants the reader to believe Farquhar escapes the hanging. “The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream.” (Bierce 3) The narrator explains the escape in great lengths as though hours had passed, and Farquhar had gone through hell and back to make it home to his wife and children. “He must have traveled the entire night.” (Bierce 6) The reader begins to feel hopeful that Farquhar has made it home to his

Everyone has a slightly different perception of reality. A person’s personal reality can be skewed in order to cope with certain inopportune situations. The degree of distress towards a particular circumstance often determines how grounded one’s reality really is. In “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” Ambrose Bierce introduces Peyton Farquhar, who imagines his own escape a moment before his death. He is pushed into the world of war and is unable to cope with his reality, causing him to imagine a solution to his problem in order to take control over his situation. Robert Enrico’s film rendition of the story creates a similar world, but one that must be communicated through images instead of words. Enrico’s impressive depiction of the protagonist’s

Section I of An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge opens with very militaristic and precise details of a scene of a man standing upon a railroad bridge in Northern Alabama. With his arms tied up behind his back with a cord and a rope closely encircling his neck, it was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head, and the slack fell to the level of his knees (399). It is apparent that this man is awaiting execution. The man standing upon the bridge was named Peyton Farquhar. As he stood there, awaiting his execution, he begin staring down into the deep unknown of the water. A piece of driftwood being carried downstream catches his attention, and he notes how slowly it appeared to be moving, as if he were watching it in slow motion. Farquhar

The imagery of the water moving fast but the driftwood floating slowly is symbolism for time passing slowly. Imagery of time is also a symbol for Farquhar’s limited time that he has left, example would be the clock ticking. Ambrose Bierce uses these two symbols to create the suspense. Readers think that Peyton Farquhar escaped The Union soldiers but in reality he was imagining it. Another example to creating and maintaining suspense Bierce uses in writing the story in non-chronological order and flipping from imagination to reality. The first two sections are in real time as the last section is imaginary time. Bierce uses foreshadowing.

The narrator describes Farquhar’s dilemma, “the man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck” (Bierce 468). The opening paragraph of the story immediately sets a dramatic tone by describing the situation Farquhar is in. By being fettered at the hands and neck, Farquhar is immobile, leaving the reader inquisitive of what has happened for him to be stuck in such a predicament. Furthermore, as the rope is severed from the bridge, Farquhar “suddenly...felt himself whirled round and round- spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men-- all were commingled and blurred” (Bierce 473). In the single moment which decides Farquhar’s fate, the reader anticipates the outcome of the action. Bierce’s lifelike details of Farquhar’s vision creates an image in which the reader does not know whether the result will be fatal or euphoric. The bold descriptions within the story enhance the plot by immersing the reader into the story to anticipate future

The man runs up her and the two grasp one another. As they lean in to kiss, the music suddenly is neither soft nor pleasant. The man grabs his throat, and shrieks, dropping to the ground. The next shot is the man back at the bridge, swaying up and down, hanging from a noose. This mimics the last line in the text, “Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.”

He thought that the water could keep him safe from any attack from the soldiers. He feels himself celebrating his victory, in other words enjoying the successful scape. On his way to home, he feels tankful for being

The title has an ominous effect upon readers. As can be seen, a terrible event is taking place at the Owl Creek Bridge – a hanging, to be precise. After all, the title does infer that an occurrence will be happening on the bridge. Peyton Farquhar, the man on the verge of being hung, is dangling over a creek, but is this the “occurrence” that Bierce is referring to?

The authors Ambrose Bierce of,” an Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and Rip Van Winkle stories we must appreciate the misconception of the mind and how the author sets images and sounds in place to create a masterful plot. In occurrence at owl Creek Bridge see the author Ambrose Bierce create a setting where a man is to me hung. Leaving the readers to "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" centers on Peyton Farquhar, a southern farmer about to be hanged by the Union army believe in an illusion the main character Peyton Farquhar mind is creating that he may escape.

The style and motives of Ambrose Bierce are those of a great intellect and cynic. Ambrose Bierce used graphic images to get his message across in a lot of his stories such as "Chicamauga" and "The Affair at Coulter's Notch". A good portion of his short stories were stories of innocent people and soldiers and their experiences. He also wrote a book called "The Devil's Dictionary," which reinterprets a few terms in the English language. Ambrose Bierce's cynical perspective, which can be seen within his literary works, actually masks a sensitive idealist, who wants to create an awareness in the readers of the horrors of war as well as the injustices and insensitivities in people and society.

Farquhar’s predicament was that, after being sentenced to hanging for his quite apparent crime, images of his family began to appear in his mind. It was clear that he wished to see them all again, and to do that, he knew that he would have to escape his problem somehow. In his final moments of living, he fantasizes about managing to flee from the position that he is currently in. His thoughts at the time were unlikely, but it was only natural for him to think about something like that. However, despite showing a happy scene later on in the story, in the end, he dies, both in his imagination and in reality.