Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence Of Owl Creek Bridge

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Recommended: War narrative writing

At a very early age children are constantly filled with ideas and stories with nothing but happy and beautiful endings. One may say that Walt Disney filled is the cause for filling their pubescent brains with these very unrealistic and impossible ideas. Others may argue that the thought of a “happily ever after” has always been a prized treasure in the minds of many. Unfortunately, real life does not always have a happy ending. In fact, life rarely ever has a happy ending. Often in old American literature war time is often fantasized as being wonderful. The men who are soldiers are often looked at as heros and almost nothing bad ever happens. This beautiful thought of war was crushed by the age of realism. Realism reveals to the reader how …show more content…

The story is based in a rural part of America during the American Civil war. It began with a confederate soldier knocking on Peyton Farquhar door in the middle of the night. He work Farquhar from his sleep one night to inform him that Union troops had rebuilt the creek bridge that was near his home. He said that the Union soldiers planned on using the bridge to help them advance in the war. The soldier then told him that there was drift wood near the bridge that could easily be caught on fire and destroy the bridge. The confederate then said that it was Farquhar’s duty, as a confederate rate, to help the south. Farquhar obliged the soldier and immediately went to the bridge. Once he made it to the bridge he was immediately encountered by Union soldiers. Among the soldiers he saw the confederate who came to his house with the warning about the bridge. He had been set up by the union soldiers. He was immediately tied up by the imposter who claimed he was a confederate soldier. He was tied up and hung from a tree. After he was tied up he began to have visions that the rope around his neck broke and he fell into the water. While underwater he dodged bullets that were being shot at him. He then made it to the forest and eventually his house. The reader was filled with the joy and excitement of his unlikely escape only to realize that it was just a vision and in the end he died a horrific hanging. “Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of Owl Creek bridge” (1508). This was a very realistic interpretation of what could have happened during the civil war. Honestly, how often does the protagonist escape to safety in real life? Almost

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