An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge Mood Analysis

The setting was the most important element in the three stories we have read for the last month or so. The setting set the mood for each story before it even began. The first story we read was, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce. The second story we read was “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell. Lastly, we read “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe.

In the story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, the setting changed frequently and in turn, it changed the mood as well. In the beginning the mood was rather gloomy. When Bierce wrote “The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age.” A humane human would not be joyful that someone was being hanged, unless that victim has wronged them. Bierce bluntly stated that the middle-aged man was being hanged. He didn’t state what the man was being hanged for either until later on which left readers wondering what he possibly could’ve done to deserve such a fate.

The story took an upbeat turn and transitioned into an exciting mood when Bierce wrote, “The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dull thunder of

the volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward.” In "The Hunger Games" movie when Katniss shoots her arrow at the bag of apples to set off the land mine, she temporarily loses her hearing. Because Peyton’s escape scene had a manipulation of the senses. Fans of the series would have been able to connect the two tremendously loud events.
In the end when Bierce wrote, “Peyton Fahrquhar is dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of Owl Creek Bridge.” This changed the mood from the exciting moments leading up to Peyton’s return home to the dark realization that this was all in his imagination. Earlier in the book he hinted that Peyton was already dead, but we as readers had completely missed that sentence in the story because he distracted us with details. Only in the end were we shocked to discover that the vivid escape was Peyton’s imagination and that it had happened in seconds, unlike how Bierce had played out the scenario making us believe that it lasted for much longer than that.

In “The Most Dangerous Game”, the setting varied from beginning to end. This quote from one of the earlier parts of the story, “That I could sleep without closing my eyes; the night would be my eyelids-” shows an example of just how dark it was on Ship-Trap Island. The setting was ideal for something unfortunate to happen to Rainsford. The quote “Bleak darkness was blacking out the sea and jungle when Rainsford sighted the lights.” shows it was extremely dark and mysterious before Rainsford arrived at the mansion after he had fallen of the boat.
After arriving at the mansion, the mood was lightened temporarily when Connell wrote, “There was a magnificence about it; it suggested a baronial hall of feudal times with its oaken panels, its high ceiling, its vast refectory tables where two score men could sit down to eat.” It showed General Zaroff was rather wealthy considering he had a mansion on the infamous Ship-Trap Island.
The story then took a dark turn when General Zaroff challenged Rainsford, betting their lives in which the loser would be fed to the dogs and the winner would sleep in General Zaroff’s fine bed. The story ended with, “He had never slept in a better bed, Rainsford decided.” Which hinted that Zaroff lost.

In “The Cask of Amontillado”, the setting contributed a debatable amount to the ending.

In the Montresor family Catacombs, it is a dark, damp, and maze-like place, not to mention underground as well. The quote, “We had passed through walls of piled bones, with casks and puncheons intermingling into the inmost recesses of catacombs.” shows that the catacombs were truly a large burial site, not just a storage type of thing, which in turn added to the eerie feeling. Another thing that added to this feeling is when Poe wrote, “Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris.” this quote, while similar to the last, still nonetheless added to an discomforting overall feeling. In the end Fortunado was chained to a wall and hidden away in those

catacombs.

The setting was a major contribution to the three stories “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, “The Most Dangerous Game”, and “The Cask of Amontillado”. It set the mood before the story even began and altered the mood as we read through the story.