“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is a short story by Ambrose Bierce that has a unexpected twist in the end. In the short story, the main character, Peyton Farquhar, is in the process of being hanged when he jumps into a dreamlike state where he escapes his death fate. Because of the changes from reality to a dream like state in the story, allows the reader feel the same type of emotions as Peyton Farquhar is feeling. In the short story, Bierce’s use of descriptive language leaves the reader to question death and the effects it has on reality. This also allows for the reader to foreshadow Peyton’s true fate. The story is told in 3rd person by the narrator. The narrator uses detail to explain every experience that Peyton is going through. With the use of his descriptive language, the reader can easily distinguish what the time period is. When …show more content…
Bierce states “A man stood upon a railroad bridge in Northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck”, you can already tell that it is a southern setting where someone is about to be hung (Bierce 1). With this information, you can also tell that the time period was some time before the 20th century. This is because until it came to an end in the 1890s, hanging was the primary method of execution (“Deathpenaltycurriculum.org”). With the use of descriptive language, in the 6th sentence of the first paragraph, you can tell that the setting is in the south during the American Civil War when Peyton states that his “excursions” were a pair of “Federal Solders” (Bierce 1). With the reader knowing the setting, it allows them to make assumptions to what is going to happen and pre-judge the main character. Bierce’s uses words such as “slave owner”, “politician”, and an “original secessionist” to describe the main character Peyton Farquhar (Bierce 6). This allows the reader to start to make their opinions of Peyton. Though this may give the reader a reason to think negatively of the main character, Bierce also gave Peyton desirable traits. He describes his eyes as “large and dark gray” and his face with “a kindly expression” (Bierce 4). He even goes on to call him a “gentlemen” (Bierce 4). As the reader is reading this, they can start to understand and try to make a connection to why this man was about to get hanged. The language that is being used gives a good description on Peyton, and it allows the author to construe the readers option on him and really get them thinking. In the upcoming moments of his death, Peyton is faced with the issue of reality and the fantasies in life.
With the use of his descriptive language, Bierce explains the events that are taken place after he is hung that allow the reader to foreshadow Peyton’s true fate. Peyton goes into an out of body dream like fantasy that he breaks free from the noose and is on his journey of escape. At first glance, the reader can assume that Peyton did indeed break free from the noose and is trying, in great effort, to escape to freedom. Throughout Peyton’s experience, there are glimpses of reality coming through. The reality of his life slipping away shows when Peyton or the narrator references Peyton’s neck. He states things such as “His neck ached horribly” and “His neck was in pain” to foreshadow his end fate of being hanged (Bierce 9,12). At the beginning of his experience, the narrator explained how Peyton was “gasping for breath” from a cause of being under for too long (Bierce 12). This is indirectly telling the reader that Peyton is in the process of suffocating, not from drowning but from the noose being around his
neck. In “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, Ambrose Bierce allows the reader to make their own judgments on the character and uses vivid language to allow the reader to foreshadow Peyton’s death before having say he did. This freedom of thought could lead the reader to be manipulated and be confused about death and the effects that it has on reality. This freedom also allows for the reader to be able to predict the ending of the story. Even though the escape of reality is prevalent throughout the story, Ambrose makes it obvious that it is impossible to really escape. Work Cited
While the story is based on a realistic plot, and even set up as a piece of historical fiction, it soon takes a drastic turn towards romanticism. When Peyton is hung off the bridge just as he is dropping to his death, the rope breaks letting him drop into the water and begin to escape by swimming for his life. This action in itself illustrates classic romanticism, as it is highly unrealistic that Peyton would have survived the impact of the rope to his neck as he dropped off the bridge. This goes on further as he survives his plunge into the water, releases himself of the ropes which bound him, and then manages to swim away to safety while being shot at by a troop of soldiers.
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” by Ambrose Bierce, is the story of the hanging of a Civil War era Southern gentleman by the name of Peyton Farquhar. The story begins with an unidentified man being prepared to be hanged by a company of Union soldiers on a railroad bridge that runs over a river. He is then identified as Peyton Farquhar, a man who attempted to destroy the very bridge they are standing on based on information he was given by a Federal scout posing as a Confederate soldier. As he is dropped from the bridge to hang, the rope snaps and he falls into the river. After freeing himself and returning to the surface of the river, he realizes that his senses are all much heightened and he even “noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass” (153). Peyton then begins to swim downstream as he is being shot at by the soldiers and a cannon as well. He soon pulls himself ashore and begins the long journey home. After walking all day and night, to the point where “his tongue was swollen with thirst” and “he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet” he finally makes it to his home (155). Just as he is about to embrace his wife he feels a sharp pain in his neck and hears a loud snap. He is dead from the hanging, and all this was just a dream. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” shows the potential strength that a person’s will to live can have, and that we often don’t appreciate...
Out of all the stories I have read so far in class, I found this story the most interesting and realistic piece. It never occurred to me that thoughts such as those mentioned in the story could actually be going through a dieing man’s mind. In fact, I show even more ignorance in that I have never thought about what is it truly like to experience a process of expected death. This kind of tragedy once happened on a day-to-day basis. Imagine all the other elaborate emotions going through the minds of others dieing. Bierce did a great job in putting true emotion into this story. I along with most of my class members agreed that we had no idea Peyton’s escape home did not occur at all until the final words of this story. For an author to create something so realistically disguised until the bitter end is truly an amazing accomplishment.
A large portion of the text in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is just Peyton’s imagination, and the details are quite vivid. Obviously, the boy in “Chickamauga” uses his imagination freely, from his pretend sword to riding the wounded soldiers like horses. It seems that this is part of Bierce’s denouncement of romanticism. Peyton’s escape, daring and unbelievable, is only his imagination. It is as if Bierce is communicating that these types of things only happen in the imagination; in reality the man uneventfully hangs and dies. The point Bierce makes is that Romanticism is just an imaginative view of the world. He attempts to make it quite clear that the world is unfair, tragic, and cruel, something Bierce had experienced firsthand. The wording used in both stories paints very realistic and grotesque images, like when the jawless soldier is described; “from the upper teeth to the throat was a great red gap fringed with hanging shreds of flesh and splinters of bone.”(Bierce) This type of description goes along with Bierce’s attempt to show true, gruesome reality, and we see it again when the boy’s mother is seen with her skull agape. Bierce also describes more beautiful scenes in a similar manner, allowing the reader to imagine vivid and detailed images. Perhaps the most prominent example of his vivid description is when Peyton emerges from the water; “He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the
In Ambrose Bierces " An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" two private soldiers of the Federal army were appointed by a sergeant to lynch Peyton Farquhar from a elderly suspended bridge because of his attempt to aid the Confederate forces. He was to be executed for aiding the confederate forces. He knew his death was at his fingertips and couldn’t help ponder its arrival. He looks at the river below observing the depth of the river. Early on in the story Ambrose portrays Peyton, from his perspective, seeing a shallow river. The fact that the river is shallow and will defiantly kill Peyton distracts the reader from the truth behind the mans observation. Peytonseeing the river shallow is foreshadowing the actual depth of the river. In fact the river is so deep that when the rope snaps it seems he falls endlessly in the water. The reader is eagerly awaiting the soon death of Peyton, then suddenly surprised while the river cushions his fall. Several other soldiers were relentlessly targeting the man at ...
We realize that Peyton never really escaped, he was seeing his life flash before his eyes and the reader was right there with him. As stated by Peter Stoicheff in ‘Something Uncanny’ : The Dream Structure in Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” “somehow the reader is made to participate in the split between imagination and reason, to feel that the escape is real while he knows it is not”(349). The reader wants to believe he survived and doesn’t realize the reality actually happening due to the altering of perspectives on Bierce’s part. There is evidence that shows that Bierce wanted the reader to see the reality that comes with your mind playing
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” by Ambrose Bierce is a short story about a man who seems to be lost in a world between reality and imagination. The story shows trials, triumphs, and the matters of life and death. The main character Peyton Farquhar is a proud confederate, husband, planter, and politician, not only is he all of those things but he is an optimist and this is what takes him on the journey of his life. After being put in a sticky situation he has nothing else to do but hope for a miracle. It’s not till the end that we find out Peyton has been dead throughout most of the story after breaking his neck from being hung.
According to Baybrook, “Peyton Farquhar believes -- as do the readers -- that he has escaped execution and, under heavy gunfire, has made his way back home” (Baybrook). One of Bierce’s main means to achieve this goal of forcing the reader to buy into his delusion is ‘time’. Because ‘time’ is utilized to calibrate human experiences, it becomes obscure, altered and split in times of extreme emotional disturbance. The time that is required for hanging Farquar seems to be indefinite, however, Bierce goes the extra mile and indicates that there is a certain ‘treshold of death’ that lingers beyond recognition. When it is exceeded, it results in a distorted and blurred pe...
Lucy Bednar explains in her criticism that Bierce uses three different voices throughout his story. In the first part of the story Bierce set up the scene. There is a man, Peyton, with a noose around his neck about to be hanged by the Northern soldiers during the civil war. Peyton is barely standing on a plank of the bridge and there are soldiers all over the place ready to
Bierce begins his story in Northern Alabama at Owl Creek Bridge, looking in on a man bound in ropes and a noose surrounded by soldiers sporting weapons and Federal Army uniforms. The dead man standing is a civilian, described as a planter and a gentleman, the kind one would
The short story starts by creating curiosity with the revelation that a man will be hung in the owl creek bridge. At that moment the reader does not know the reasons for which the man will be sentenced. In the second section, the name of the man who will be hanged is mentioned, the motives for his crime and how he was captured. The final section illustrates the struggle Peyton Farquhar was facing and the events that went through your mind at that moment. He imagined/dream that he escape and peaceful return to their home. But the reality is another and his life ends in darkness and silence. (Bierce 201-209)
The theme in “An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge” is brought together by three necessary literary elements. The author incorporates symbolism into the story to help support the theme that nobody can escapes death and how thoughts in the mind are so substantial in the consciousness that it can take over the reality. The author uses symbolism to support the theme that nobody can escape death Bierce showed the piece of driftwood slowly being carried away. That piece of driftwood brought hope to Peyton Farquhar, because of this his mind started to wonder out of reality. He started to go into a fantasy world where he could escape and become that driftwood in the currents of the rivers. By giving Fargher this hope the author was able to allow him to escape in only his mind. Showing that there was no reality for the execution to go undone. The author lead us into such a unbelievable r...
Death can both be a painful and serious topic, but in the hands of the right poet it can be so natural and eloquently put together. This is the case in The Sleeper by Edgar Allan Poe, as tackles the topic of death in an uncanny way. This poem is important, because it may be about the poet’s feelings towards his mother’s death, as well as a person who is coming to terms with a loved ones passing. In the poem, Poe presents a speaker who uses various literary devices such as couplet, end-stopped line, alliteration, image, consonance, and apostrophe to dramatize coming to terms with the death of a loved one.
Since the story was written in the third person objective, it is easier for the reader to remain objective while analyzing the story. If we one were to hear the story from on of the character’s point of view, the retelling of the story would be clouded with various em...
... but instead he snaps out of it and plummets to his death. His neck snaps and the planter is no longer living. The text says, “Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.” (Bierce) Peyton was executed and could not do anything to save his own life. He made some mistakes that he paid with his life.