Owl Creek Bridge Psychology

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.

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.

Throughout the story of ¨An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge¨ Bierce foreshadows death by using multiple literary techniques. The most commonly used by him are allusions, imagery, and preternatural plot elements. The significance of Bierce using these techniques is to hint, towards the readers that death is coming upon Farquhar.

Ambrose Bierce led a relatively full but tragic life. After losing his sons Day and Leigh to suicide and alcoholism respectively, his wife left him for another man (“Ambrose Bierce”). His struggles with death and the inequity of life are evident throughout his literary works. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” illustrates many of the power struggles that Bierce was fighting throughout much of his life.

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” leads readers to query Ambrose Bierce about the numerous point of view shifts his story takes. Ambrose Bierce’s descriptive writing style grasps the reader’s attention, unknowingly manipulating the reader throughout the entire story. This statement holds to be true as the story line develops. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” has a variety of ups and downs throughout the story, changing the direction and perspective through its point of view of omniscient and limited omniscient. Ambrose Bierce’s various shifts deceive readers into believing the protagonist, Peyton Farquhar, has escaped a perilous fate.

It's also worth remembering that Bierce vanished under strange circumstances in Mexico, adding another dimension of intrigue to his writings. The conclusion to his life may be interpreted as a last, realistic narrative consistent with the twists in his literature. While it's knowledgeable to draw parallels between Bierce's life and his work, it's important to remember that "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is a product of his imagination, even if it is informed by his personal history. To conclude the analysis, it examined how the characters' choices and actions lead to consequences and shape the outcome of the stories. This topic was explained to explore the impact of decisions made by the characters in both stories.

“The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” by Ambrose Bierce tells the story of a man being executed. As the man dies he imagines his escape. Facing death, the man wants nothing more ten to go home to his family. During his journey home, the man comes to appreciate life. Perhaps he sees how he should have lived, only as a dying man could. When faced with death he truly begins to realize what he has lost. This story might show us how death can enlighten us about life.

It is believed that when people die their life flashes before their eyes, or they identify a white light at the end of a hallway and they feel compelled to walk toward it. No matter what is seen, it is all created by their imagination. In a few cases, the images can be almost as real as reality, such as in the story “The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce where a man believes he escaped death just to be snapped back into reality. His demise may have been quick to come to the men who caused it, but thanks to the author and the main character’s imagination; the time before his death was full of prolonged suspense. Ambrose Bierce utilizes four major techniques that intensify the feelings of suspense from the reader, which include

Even before the medical field of psychology was recognized, American writer Edgar Allan Poe shone a spotlight on some of the complicated mechanisms of the human brain in his works. Living a troubled life himself, Poe has a keen understanding of the complexities of the human brain and their effects on thoughts, feelings, and behavior. At first glance, Poe’s writing usually tends to creates a dark and gloomy atmosphere, one that immediately foreshadows doom for the protagonist. Poe’s understanding of the human mind and the elements of psychology are clearly marked in stories such as “The Cask of Amontillado.” In Poe’s stories, he presents complex characters who become susceptible to the diverse forces of the mind such as reverse psychology, guilt, superstition, perversity, revenge, and schizophrenia. First published in 1846, “The Cask of Amontillado” is an instance of Poe combining psychological elements of two distinct characters. In “The Cask of Amontillado,” Montresor’s brilliant use of reverse psychology, and his perversity and guilt are what forms him as an unbalanced, psychologically driven character.

Edgar Allan Poe has a distinctive and dark way of writing (Poe & Kennedy, pp.22). His mysterious style of writing appeals to passion and sentimentality. Poe’s most prominent works of fiction are gothic. His stories tend to have similar recurring theme of either death, lost love or both. Poe’s psychologically thrilling stories examining the depths of the humanoid psyche earned him much fame throughout his lifetime and after his death. And this distinctive style of writing made him possess his own style of wiring (Arbor, pp.71). There is a psychological concentration which is an important characteristic of Poe’s literatures, particularly the tales of horror that encompass his best and well-known works, such as The Black Cat and The Raven which

When looking at a piece of literature through a psychological approach it is easy to apply Sigmund Freud’s theories of the id, ego, and superego, which focus on conscious and unconscious behavior. When analyzing many of Poe’s works, critics tend to look through a psychological lens. Specifically in Poe’s The Black Cat. Some critics believe that Poe’s alcoholism is reflected in the piece, but many, such as James W. Gargano “advised the tales readers to avoid the biographical pitfall of seeing Poe and the first-person narrator of The Black Cat as ‘identical literary twins’” (Piacentino 1). It is due to his childhood that Poe’s narrator in The Black Cat subconsciously places animals before humans, thus leading to him to murder his wife.

In conclusion, the story of “ An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” relates better to perception and consciousness than the film version of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Bierce takes the reader from reality to one man’s perception of reality and plays each idea off the other. Meanwhile, Enrico takes the audience through the actions of this man’s reality. Both the short story and film show their views on the stage of the dying man through their own unique

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.

Reading and understanding literature is not as easy as it sounds. Being able to dissect each piece of information and connect it to the overall theme of the story takes lots of rereading and critical thinking. Reading the story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” takes lots of critical thinking and understanding the literature in a different point of view than the average reader would. The theme of this particular story quickly came to mind after initially concluding the reading, the author is trying to convey that nobody can escape death and how thoughts in the mind are so substantial in the consciousness that it can take over the reality. The author comes to this theme by incorporating specific literary elements such a symbol, irony,