Compare And Contrast An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge

At the time of the Civil War, about 620,000 people were killed. The general public had never seen such a mass of men and boys lost through war, and such a massive loss of life shocked them to the bone. During and after the war, people began to write about their experiences and tell their tale. Many discouraged war because of all the death and destruction it caused, and almost all came out of the war a changed man. During the course of Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier, a soldier wounded by battle discharges himself from a hospital to find his long lost love again. Similar to Cold Mountain, the short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce tells about a soldier, but in captivity. The soldier is prepared to be hanged, but

dreams about escaping back to his family and surviving capture. In the novel Cold Mountain and the short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, both authors hoped to depict the brutal reality of war and the evil in humanity through the characters in their works to expose these feelings to the public to further show that war changes men in a negative way and humanity can be inherently evil so that wars could be avoided.
Both of these stories take place within the time period of 1861-1865, during the long and bloody Civil War. The setting of Cold Mountain is in a hospital in Virginia near the end of the Civil War. In “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, which takes place around the middle of the War, the narrator speaks from his restricted position in the middle of the bridge, tied up and about to be hanged. During this time period the hospitals were brimming with soldiers with various injuries in the aftermath of various battles. Likewise, the need to fight opposing sides led to deceptive measures as those taken against (insert character in novel). In addition to the evil in humanity brought about by war was the underlying lack of unity in the states power/dispute of the federal government to dictate free states and slave states. The historical time period of industrialization and the controversial fight for the end of slavery held a major part in each of these stories, because of the fact that both of these topics impacted the beginning and outcome of the Civil War in some way. At a time of constant arguing between sides of the country the debate for slavery was ablaze. The abolition movement was strongly supported in the North, and the anti-abolitionists in the South were fighting them just as strongly as the northerners were supporting it. This constant back-and-forth controversy reached the point where southern states slowly seceded from the Union, signaling the beginning of the Civil War (Chesnut). Industrialization was just about coming to an end by the time the Civil War started, but had a big impact and fueled the war by allowing troops, supplies and weapons to be transported faster with the newly invented locomotive and steamboat (Civil War). Weapons and ammunition were being produced faster with the Bessemer Process of converting steel, allowing for the mass production of steel (Civil War). All of this new technology only amassed to greater amounts of casualties in the war. Tie into brutal reality emphasize technology and how war is more brutal with newer weapons and relate to author’s purpose of exposing negative war feelings of the public
Authors Charles Frazier and Ambrose Bierce develop supporting characters in their respective stories demonstrating how humanity can be evil. .In each story, there are characters encountered along each main character’s journey that are inherently evil. Junior, one of the characters along Inman’s journey in Cold Mountain, forces Inman to marry a woman he does not love after drugging him. Junior could have been a good person and helped a man in need, but instead decided to turn Inman over to the Home Guard, which he is running away from. The Home Guard will force him to fight again in the Civil War if they catch him. He cannot be turned into the Home Guard because it means that he has to fight and is not allowed to continue his journey to find and see his beloved Ada again. For his actions, Junior is symbolic of the evil and deception in humanity along with the false illusion of kindness. In the scene where Inman kills Junior, Frazier describes,“Inman stepped to Junior and struck him across the ear with the barrell of the LeMatt’s and then clubbed at him with the butt until he lay flat on his back”(Frazier 234). Although Inman is the victim he feels so much hatred towards Junior that before he escapes and tries to forget about his experience, he finds and kills Junior in his own home. Inman originally thought that Junior would be trustworthy, and all Inman wanted was some kindness. Later on, Inman realizes that Junior deceived him with kindness, and that he must prevent Junior from doing this to anyone else. Frazier includes these scenes to create a connection for the reader to highlight that Junior could have been a good person, but instead drugged Inman against his will and forced him to complete the act of marriage while under his influence. Inman justifies killing Junior because of his belief that no one else should have to go through what he did when all he needed was help. Junior’s actions against Inman symbolize his deception of kindness and the inherent evil in humanity during wartime.
In “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, Bierce writes in the third person so as a reader we feel >>>>> emotions.

This further emphasizes the brutal reality and evil the war has brought about. This scene comes about as a Union soldier traps a Confederate scout and personally convicted Fahrquhar and sentenced him to hanging. the narrator’s capturer is viewed as inherently evil. The capturer, Peyton Fahrquhar, teases the man and talks to him before finally hanging him. The main character has an illusion of where he escapes, and eventually Peyton Fahrquhar is the one hanged under Owl Creek Bridge at the end of the story. The irony in the story is very well portrayed, for in the narrator’s illusion he sees his capturer hanged under the bridge instead of him. The irony of this situation intertwines with the symbolism of the bridge itself. The bridge represents death in this story, because of the fact the narrator is hanged there. He knows his death is inevitable, and welcomes it when he realizes he cannot escape, even in his illusion. Not only is the bridge symbolic for death, but it also is beneficial for the reader to picture the scene in which the story takes place. Bierce provides a vivid description of the bridge, with the deep blue river rushing beneath it, so that the reader may picture the narrator’s predicament and what he sees from his point of view. In his illusion, the narrator sees and explains his capturer being the one hanged, saying, “Peyton Fahrquhar was dead;

his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of owl creek bridge”(Bierce 11). The narrator hates the evilness of the man that was about to hang him to the point of where he envisions Peyton being hanged himself. He sees the man as true evil, and portrays him as such in his vision. He wants the man that hangs him to see what it’s like from his point of view, and the narrator wants to see things from Peyton Fahrquhar’s point of view. In his vision, the imagery of the bridge and river is described, and the death of Peyton is also described in great detail. Bierce uses such detail here because he wants the reader to be on the bridge with the man being hanged, as a witness to the horror and death during war. Both of these characters prove that humanity can be inherently evil, because their actions displayed prevent them from being good people. Crane and Bierce use literary elements and fictional stories of a soldier’s life to reinforce the idea of humanity can be inherently evil. Between Junior refusing to help Inman and turning him into the Home Guard, and Peyton Fahrquhar hanging the narrator without chance of mercy or being released, humanity can be shown to be inherently evil.
War changes men mentally and physically through their combat experiences and training, but war changed most men for worse.

On Inman’s journey home, he encounters a mother bear and a bear cub. He has had past experience with bears and knew how to handle them, but when the mother bear charged at him, he had no choice but to move away from the cliff behind him. The mother ran off the cliff and only the cub was left. Inman thought about keeping the cub as a pet and giving it to Ada, which was what he would have done before the war. Instead he kills the cub with his pistol, thinking, “What Inman did, though, was all he could do. He picked up the LeMatt’s and shot the cub in the head and watched it pause as its grip on the tree failed and it fell to the ground”(Frazier 354). The cub is very symbolic of Inman’s change through wartime. After the war and his training, he feels that he has to kill the cub to survive, or to put it out of its misery. He did have the choice of hunting other game to eat, but he still cooked the cub. He mentions that before the war he mentions that he would have kept the cub as a pet, possibly given it to Ada, or let it live in the wild. Inman kills the cub because the war has implemented a ‘kill or be killed’ instinct inside

him.
After the incident with the mother bear and cub, Inman later reaches Ada. They spend time catching up for a few days, but Inman is chased by the Home Guard after going into town. He decides to fight with them because he knows that nothing can be solved by talking with these men that will stop at nothing to find and capture him. They exchange shots until Inman runs to reach the forest, and he realizes the only member of the Guard left is a boy. In the forest, he attempts not to kill the boy by talking to him and trying to reason with him. When Inman finally has the boy pinned on the ground, the boy shoots him. The scene is described when, “Nothing about the boy moved but his hand, and it moved quicker than you could see. Inman suddenly lay on the ground. The boy sat and looked at him and then looked at the pistol in his hand and said, Thank God. As if he had not reckoned at all on it functioning as it had”(Frazier 444). Even though Inman could have killed the boy when he had the chance, he tried to spare him. The boy, influenced by war, killed Inman out of belief that it would do good because Inman was the ‘enemy’ in the boy’s head. The irony of Inman trying to do good and spare the boy and the boy killing him is profoundly seen. Inman makes the good decision, even though he was influenced by war, and the boy makes the bad decision because of his influence of war. Men that go through the experience of war have a hard time adjusting back to normal life, and usually can never return to the mindset they had previously had before war. Both Inman and the boy that killed him were influenced by war to do things that they had the choice not to do, because of their ‘kill or be killed’ mindset implemented by war.
By showing humanity’s evil and harsh truth of war in Cold Mountain and An “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, both authors used their characters as symbols to explain that humanity is inherently evil and men can be negatively changed by war. Throughout both books, the evil in humanity and how war changes men was displayed through the irony and symbolism of the characters or events in the stories. Inman’s encounter with the bear and the boy represents both of these ideas, and the hanging of the narrator’s capture at Owl Creek Bridge also represents these ideas. As long as there is evil in humanity, there will be war, and as long as there is war, there will be men changed by war, so what can be done to avoid evil in humanity and therefore war?