Peyton Farquhar In An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge

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.

During the Civil War, many civilians were killed for the cause that they believed in. The protagonist in Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Bridge” is experiencing the same unfortunate fate. This short story is the tale of Peyton Farquhar, a civilian under execution for helping the Confederate army. Bierce uses various literary elements, including imagery and symbolism, to portray suspense. To begin, Bierce utilizes imagery to create tension.

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.

One way in which An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is an example of literary realism, thus supporting Becker’s and Pizer’s definitions of realism, is through its abundance of verisimilitude of detail. The narrator attempts to thrust the reader into the shoes of the subject, James Farquhar, by using descriptive terms that are very realistic in nature. The story’s opening scene takes place on Owl Creek Bridge, a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, with Peyton Farquhar being hanged. Ambrose Bierce, the author, uses many seemingly unimportant details in the opening scene and throughout the story in a great attempt to make the reader feel as though he is there himself. One such example is when Bierce describes the actual platform on which Farquhar is standing. He writes, “Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners” (Bierce 1476). This is seemingly unimportant, but after reading the story in its entirety, I realized that it was intentionally written in this manner

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.

I chose to write about “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” because it only lasts for a short few seconds, but it lasts for days in the mind of Peyton Farquhar. It is interesting to me how time is so much shorter in real life time than it is in the mind. This story took place in an Alabama town during the Civil War.

In “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce, the story of a man by the name of Peyton Farquhar whose unlawful actions landed him in a heap of trouble is told. The story is split into three sections which goes back in forth between the past, the present and Farquhar’s falsation of both. By taking the approach of using symbols throughout the story, Bierce gave the opportunity for the reader to feel like they are apart of the story as well as leaving them with a shocker in the very end. Since the story goes back in forth between reality and illusion, the reader may get a bit confused while reading but you get

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.

“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.

An occurrence at owl creek bridge” is an elaborately devised commentary on the fluid nature of time. The story which moves from the present to the past to what is revealed to be the imagine present, reflects this fluidity as well as the tension that exists among competing notions of time. What at first appears to be the continuous flow of the execution taking place in the present moment. After the present moment of the fluid of nature peyton farquhar thinks and feels very good about the great detail about Farquhar hanging. Farquhar really didn’t know much about the soldiers that execute him and he don’t know what they were thinking about. Farquhar thinks that the soldiers are acting a lot from the other soldiers. Now they are trying to find out if the soldiers feel guilty.The soldiers might have a different mind into the hanging of Farquhar and they think that farquhar had a mind as he faces him death.

Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is not only a short story, but also a film, that is set during the Civil War era. Even though the text and film are similar in different aspects, the two mediums also contain many significant differences that make the text a better medium for the story. The film does an adequate job of providing a visual of what is happening in the story, but it leaves out a lot of details. For instance, the film does not include part two, a significant scene from the story. This is the part when the author introduces and describes the protagonist, Peyton Farquhar. In addition, Part two is when we finally understand why the protagonist is being hanged and why he went to the bridge. By leaving this part out

How many people would truly die for another person? Or harder yet, die for a cause? Many would say no, the task is too difficult, it’s too much to ask a person to do. And who can blame those who believe that? After all, death is absolutely final and irreversible, to die for an idea might seem like a complete impossibility. But there are a selective few who would bravely do what they believe right, even when the consequences may be terrible.

“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 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.

The structure of the story, helps to show the significance of the power of imagination in life. Bierce used structure to help influence this idea, to help reader to understand the main character’s problem in the context of the story. At the beginning of the story, the main character Peyton Farquhar, is shown on a bridge. Peyton, according to the text, “stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below” (83). From the opening sentence, Bierce has definitely grabbed the readers’ attention. Readers can imagine the scenes, in which the action is occurring. Bierce used structure to make point of view appear better throughout the story. Instead of explaining why Peyton was hanged first, Bierce went to the actual hanging itself. The story could have been better if it went chronically, but since information was withheld, the story became better. Bierce jumped around in his story, and had time to