Owl Creek Bridge

Does time stop or slow down during death? In the short story by Ambrose Bierce “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”. The author extensively uses foreshadowing during the short story that manipulates the reader to lead towards the factors of symbolism, irony, setting, and viewpoint. They’re numerous viewpoints from the readers perspective of, symbolism, and irony that, indicate the timeline of Peyton Farquhar tragic death. Ambrose Bierce uses the time to manipulate the reader from understanding the plot, making it impossible to forecast most of the short story.

In Ambrose Bierce’s short story, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Hill, a man named Peyton Farquhar is about to be hanged for treason against the Union. While waiting to fall off the bridge to hang, Farquhar thinks back to his wife and child he left back home. He thinks of everything that brings him joy in life before his final breath. He is then dropped from the bridge, but instead of dying the rope snaps and he plunges into the water underneath the bridge. Farquhar eventually escapes his captors and makes it back home to his loving family, once again happy and at ease. Suddenly Peyton Farquhar is dead, hanging from the bridge. His escape was only a figment of his imagination. Bierce uses a plethora of literary techniques to produce suspense in his short story.

The short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce is a short story about a man named Peyton Farquhar is about to be hanged. The story takes place during the Civil War and Farquhar is constantly thinking of his wife and children at home. He dreams that he is able to escape and run to safety, where he finds his wife. When he goes to hug her, he suddenly feels a strong pain around his neck. Farquhar is then hanging off the bridge with the noose still around his neck. He imagined all of this before he was hanged.

I chose this source from the National Archives due to its relevance to the era in which “The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, by Ambrose Bierce was written. This document stresses the life of Confederate citizens in relation to contact with Federal soldiers. It includes information about citizens loyal to the Confederate flag spying, violating military orders, citizens moving through military installations, citizens not surrendering to the Union, and citizens committing sabotage to Federal arms. Citizens also provided business firms and services to assist the Confederate war effort, even after being seized by Federal arms. Civilian businesses even northward provided Confederate espionage, deceit, and the hiding of Confederate guerilla forces.

Ambrose Bierce, wrote “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” in 1891. The story is about a man named Peyton Farquhar, standing on a railroad bridge above the water. His wrists are tied behind his back, and around his neck is a noose that is tied to a beam overhead. Farquhar is being prepared for execution by hanging from Owl Creek Bridge. The story took place during the American Civil War in Alabama. Tone is defined as the author’s implied attitude. Tone is important because it shows the author’s feelings about the story and characters, without directly saying it. The tone of a story affects the audience’s interpretations of the characters. In “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” the tone of the narrator is sympathetic and leaves the readers feeling compassion for the main character.

The film version of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge leaves out section two, along with many other important factors. Peyton Farquhar: the main character and the man being hanged is left nameless throughout the film and his detailed background that is portrayed in the text is left out as well. By reading the

Ambrose Bierce’s short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is a story about a man’s final moments on earth before he is hanged and how he got there. There is a struggle within the character Farquhar of who he is and who he thinks he is. This causes different views throughout the story between reality and a fantasized reality. This plays a big role in the story because in part three of the story he thinks he is far superior and had outwitted his captures and escaped without a scratch after the rope broke and fell into the water. In reality he had been hanged and his body was swaying back and forth. This story had more meaning then just the top layer of being just about a guy who is being hanged. The meaning of this story is how fluid time moves, by this I mean how time seems to flow like a river it can move fast to slow and even seem to stand still. It has a secondary meaning of how we can fantasize another reality that can cause troubles for us. By this I mean you can envision your self into another world when you are still in the actual world, this can cause you to get yourself into a lot of trouble.

He began to think of how he could get his hands free then he could get the noose from his neck, jump into the water and swim to his escape. When he dropped from the bridge, the rope snapped into and he fell into the water. His hands freed themselves and untied the rope from around his neck. He reached the surface and realized that his senses were super human. He saw things very distinctly. He realized that he was being shot at, he escaped and made it safely to dry land. He began his journey home, about 30 miles away. He traveled through seemingly never ending forest. He was moving along day and night with no rest or food and was very sore. He heard strange noises coming from the woods. He believed that as he was walking, he fell into a sleep. About the time he woke up at home with his wife and kids, he felt a searing pain in his neck and everything went

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.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, directed by Robert Enrico, depicts an occurrence in the mind of Peyton Farquhar. He is a civilian who tampers with the Union’s railroad system and is going to be hanged, and all he can think about is escaping and getting home to his wife. Unfortunately, death is a reality and no one can escape it.

Ambrose Bierce’s short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” illustrates a theme of illusion versus reality distorted by the human mind. In the story, a man named Peyton Farquhar is about to be hanged on a railroad bridge towards the end of the American Civil War. Farquhar, a Confederate citizen eager to help the Confederate States of America’s cause, ventures out towards Owl Creek Bridge at the advice of a Union scout in disguise. Unbeknownst to Farquhar, Union troops captured the bridge and surrounding territory, and upon capturing Farquhar, elect to hang him on charges of being a Confederate spy and sympathizer. As he is being hanged, however, Farquhar is able to escape his fate by falling into the river below. He manages to return back to his home, only to find out the entire experience of escape was an illusion created by his own imagination. The story concludes with the revelation that he actually died on the railroad bridge. Farquhar’s mind was able to create a whole new reality for himself. This reality was vivid, and it seems real to the reader until the very end of the story. The hallucination also spanned hours, yet in reality time passed for only a few seconds. Ambrose Bierce’s story demonstrates the impeccable powers of the human mind and its ability to distort time and reality for itself.

The short story, “An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce, is quite strange and vivid in its description of the final moments before death. It gives a sudden burst of hope to the reader with the escape of main character, Peyton Farquhar.

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is a story of a man who is fighting to live but is already dead. The foreshadowing and shock that is used in this story point towards Peyton Farquhar’s death. From neck pain to the cannon he hears really is only a mere gun that is shot at him. This story is full of literary techniques. The Irony that Peyton Farquhar a man that’s already dead thinks he has escaped but is only in his reality. Everything in this story come together to show that this man is dead no matter how hard he fights and the literary techniques and foreshadowing is great at telling you he is dead.

As Farquhar is falling to his death, time seems to slow, or come to a brief halt, as the

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.