How Does Bierce Create Tension In An Occurrence At Owl Bridge

Ambrose Bierce is the author of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” he wrote this short story to inform his readers on how terrible war is but to also put them in Fahrquhar mind. Peyton Fahrquhar was caught tampering with a bridge and was sent to be hanged. Bierce has used imagery to help the readers imagine what fahrquhar is really experiencing. The author applied imagery in many ways but some more than other he said he was standing on the bridge looking down and a pieced of drift wood floats by he had said before the current of the water was moving fast but the way he explained the wood it was floating slow this could resemble time slowing down for him.

Often times war is depicted in a victorious, triumphant manner when in reality war is chaotic; full of destruction and death. In Stephen Crane’s “A Mystery of Heroism” and Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge,” we witness the harsh reality of the war and the common human reaction to the havoc. Fred Collins simply wants water, but the well is on the other side of the battlefield. Peyton Farquhar, a loyal civilian to the South, just wanted to help in the war but instead was hanged for his good-intentioned attempt to destroy the bridge to help the Confederates. Ambrose Bierce and Stephen Crane wrote “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge” and “A Mystery of Heroism” to show the natural human condition in adverse situations.

Through “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” the soldiers standing, watching as everything goes on around them, are not able to stop what is happening. The soldiers represent the unforgiving nature of war.

When preternatural plot elements take place in the story, Farquhar´s physical senses are abnormally alert. ¨Ḧe looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf¨ ( Bierce 485). These hints seem more subtle than the other techniques, but if the sentence is played close attention to you notice how it's a hint towards looming death.

To begin with, the mass bloodshed that occurred during the major, long-drawn conflict of 1861 to 1865 was called the Civil War. The stakes were dangerously raised as a casualty count climbed toward roughly 1,264,000 deaths and other similar ailments. Although, a number of books and historical fiction are based on the Civil War; the short story that we are particularly focusing on is “The Drummer Boy of Shiloh.” In this piece of literature beautifully written by the author, Ray Bradbury, we experience Bradbury’s story based on a 14-year old, dejected drummer boy, Joby, who doubts that he has a crucial role in the army. Throughout the short story, a various amount of symbols stick out like a sore thumb and ultimately enhance the story’s

About a third into the story, it sifts to the past, as far Fahrquhar flashes back to when, what now seems stupid, his impulse to sabotage the railroad tracks to prevent the cival war soldiers from coming into the town with the possibility of harming his family was triggered. This builds the audience’s anticipation because the hanging hasn’t happened yet and the author is trailing off into other things. This is a “cut to the chase” stimulation as it builds the excitement.

This creates a suspenseful journey that seems to see him freed from his noose and carried almost home to the loving arms of his wife. "As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it…" (paragraph 7). This period of time in which we follow along in our minds seems to last through the day. In the end we find that the time was only in Farquhar's head and was really only the last few seconds of his life as he saw it before the rope broke his neck. However, the hanging is not the most significant part of the story because Bierce's third person narrator remains focused on the details of the perceived passing of the time rather than the action. Although the hanging is an action necessary to Farquhar's experience, it remains in the shadows of the story, as we believe he escapes death and are drawn into his head to struggle with him towards home and freedom. This point of view entices the reader more deeply into the episode than would a less knowing point of view.

The story does well in manipulating a reader's way of thinking there are moments that will people thinking one thing is going to happen, but then it is later revealed the opposite, or nothing at all occurs. Evidence of such is when Peyton Fahrquhar is visited by a supposed Confederate soldier that seem to be friendly until later on readers find out the soldier was actually from the Union army. Such evidence is hinted when the author is showing the readers the last thing Peyton remembers before he was on the bridge. The story shows ” One evening Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rusty bench near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up the gate asking for a drink of water” ( Bierce 2). Later on, in that same paragraph readers will notice that the soldier was giving Peyton pretty valuable information a typical soldier does not tell a civilian. With what is shown goes on par with the idea of the tone and the theme due to the fact that the average reader at first would fall for such a fake identity just to be surprised at who arrested Peyton.

Liam O’Flaherty’s realistic fiction story, “The Sniper,” takes place in Dublin, Ireland during a civil war. In the story, a Republican Sniper is stuck on a roof with enemy snipers surrounding him. He shoots two enemies down before he is shot in the arm causing his rifle to brake. Now he must find a way to make a hard shot in order to kill the enemy with just a revolver and a hurt arm. By using word choice and sensory details O’Flaherty demonstrates the theme that actions have serious repercussions.

“Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body with a broken neck, swung gently from side or side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek Bridge” (146). This was the reality Mr. Farquhar was fleeing: his hanging. One can hardly blame him for dreaming that the rope broke and he floated away down the river to the comfort of his family. He wanted desperately to get away that he imagined so while he was dying. The story starts out to feel hopeful when it seems Peyton has escaped his capturers and then abruptly the realization hits that he was just trying to project himself to a different place as to not face the dreadful

All of the scenes the audience imagined were fake and imagined by Peyton. He had those vivid details of life, in the split seconds, prior to his death. As mentioned in the introduction, Bierce wrote “An Occurrence at Owl Creek,” and used his accounts of the war effectively in the story. According to Hal Holladay, “the use of the adverb “gently” to describe the movement of Farquhar’s [Peyton’s] dead body…are clear indications of Bierce’s cynicism” (Holladay).

“An Occurrence at Own Creek Bridge” is a very detailed story which paints a vivid

Death; destruction; crawling, bloody men without jaws; and a child in the middle of it is just a glimpse of the grotesque short narrative “Chickamauga” by Ambrose Bierce. Chickamauga Creek is an area near Chattanooga, Tennessee and northwestern Georgia, plagued by war, suffering, and bloodshed from the Civil War (Bohannon). Bierce served in the Union Army during the American Civil War (Campbell). Many Americans then, and today, romanticize war with glory, heroism, and patriotism. Bierce defied literary status quo, creating graphic accounts of war, in an age of sentimentalism and melodrama (Morris). Lesser publicized were the perspectives, thoughts, and realities of the soldiers after serving and surviving in the civil

The first part of the story we follow a nameless man who is soon to be hanged for his crimes against the Union. As we travel into the next part we are given a name; Peyton Fahrquhar. This will be, by far one of the most over dramatic men you will ever meet in fiction. The events he experiences, as told by the narrator, are full of flowery

All these symbols could not happen to an average individual, the reader ignores these symbols. Having so much hope for him to escape the readers will will expect Peyton escape but Bierce turns it around by one sentence at the end of 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”. Which brought the reader back into reality, Bierce was able to show that death can not be escaped.