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An occurrence at owl creek bridge based on ambrose bierce short essay
An occurrence at owl creek bridge based on ambrose bierce short essay
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Ambrose Bierce’s“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”takes place in northern Alabama during the civil war era. The main protagonist is Peyton Fahrquhar. At the start of the story, Payton was standing at the bridge, looking down twenty feet where the water was. He was bounded by cords at the wrists and a noose around his neck. The people who were containing him were two private soldiers from theFederal army. They were going to hang him, and during his execution he starts having flashbacks and other mental scenarios. The theme of the story centers on the illusion of life and death being blurred. It demonstrates how the human struggle/need to survive can help bring a person become more aware and conscious about their life. The details of Peyton’s …show more content…
worldview when he was on the bridge changes dramatically when he believes his end is near. Everything is slow and louder. He notices driftwood dancing in the water, loud metallic clanging, the water touched with gold from the sun, the whole situation and where he is. He’s becoming more conscious of himself. He’s becoming more aware of his family as he says “striking through the thoughts of his dear ones sounded like sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith’s hammer upon the anvil”. It came to him sharply. At the beginning the environment and people moved rather quick and straightforward, but it slows and he starts to recognize things around him. He was reminded of what he’s about to lose and a sense of regret rolled over him. Because of Peyton’s sense of dying is a rather strong, he flashback to a time before this situation.
It reminded him of who he was and tells the reader who he was as well. In Part II, it starts off saying what his occupation was and his reputation is with his community. “Peyton Fahrquhar was a well to do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause”. That part of the paragraph already tells us a lot about who Peyton is as a character. It already establishes that he is a planter, respected person, owns slaves, a politician and devoted to the southern …show more content…
cause. Peyton has a flashback to one evening where he and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench when a gray-clad solider enters their property requesting some water to have. Mrs. Fahrquhar goes to get some and the solider tells Mr. Fahrquhar about the bridge and how the Yanks come into play. However the man was a Federal Scout. Peyton was being misinformed. Peyton asked if there was any forces on the other side, but told that there is only one sentinel. Peyton asks what a civilian/student of hanging can accomplish.He was told that the bridge was dry and easily flammable. He wants an adventure and is clouded by his arrogance. After getting the information about how he can set it on fire he decides to go the 30 miles and do it. Part III is interesting as it describes him escaping from the bridge after he realized his plan to burn down the bridge was foiled.
We are told that Peyton has escaped and got loose from the custody of the Federal army. It describes his freedom from the grip of those who captured him. The description of the setting changed. The tone went from depressing to a more uplifting mood. “He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising to the surface- knew it with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable.” This makes the reader feel relieved because the protagonist went against the odds and won because they survived. However, it’s all an illusion illustrated by Peyton. At the end it describes his hanging body swing side to side on the timbers of Owl Creek Bridge. Everything in between was him urging to get back home, driven by the thought of his family, but he was fighting an already lost battle. He recognized them first, over his original mission to sabotage the bridge. He urged to get home to
them. During Peyton’s (imaginary) journey to get back to his family he (even though the story is in third person) describes the surrounding differently than he did at the beginning when he was captured. “It looked likes diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble” compared to “beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view.” The drastic mood change creates such an optimistic feeling in the end. After everything however, none of it was real. After journeying with Peyton and seeing him going against the odds of everything he went through, we were rooting for him. We were supposed to feel for him and how he did it. However, we both fell for the illusion, but it displayed a good message. It brought a sense of hope to the reader and Peyton. It showed us how Peyton’s need to survive was so strong that he managed to develop an entire hypothetical scenario where he was able to escape. Peyton’s awareness was heightened, but clouded with hope. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge displayed how the world can be so cynical and bad, but you can make your own happiness (happy ending). His death was unromantic and untimely, but in the end it was alright.
Ambrose Bierce’s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, which is a short story released in 1890, gained much popularity over the years. It is most famous for it’s manipulation of time. Though the events in the book only take seconds, the story is over eight pages long. Time seems to slow for the man in the noose and at the same time speed up for the reader. In this way, Bierce presents his manipulation of time in the story.
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.
Particularly, Peyton Farquhar was an innocent civilian and a family man willing to help the southern cause. In part II of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” a Confederate soldier stopped at Peyton’s plantation and discussed about burning down the bridge. The soldier implied that Peyton should do it. As a result, Peyton went down to the bridge in an attempt to burn the bridge. Afterwards, we learned that the Confederate soldier was a federal scout and that he had framed
“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.
In writing this story, Bierce is commenting on war itself and the contrast between this romanticized tale of heroism and the gruesome reality the hundreds of thousands of men had to face, and still have to face to this very day. The true horrors of war are never normally publicized, and this is why the populace is willing to go and fight. In the case of Peyton Farquhar, this ignorance lead to his blind patriotism, which in turn lead to his death. As the narrator relates to the reader: “Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with the gallant army [...] and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction.” (Bierce 2). The aforementioned quote is most definitely an affirmation of the grandeur of the military, and this is the perspective that Peyton Farquhar and many men shared. It is this illusion of grandeur that corrupts many men (and women) to head out and die in horrible
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
People can easily recognize that a butterfly, a horse, or a tree are alive and that a
“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...
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge uses dramatic irony, imagery and time to piece this short story together in a compelling way that brings the readers through the text in a swift, but gentle movement. Bierce is also protesting the Civil War going on in the United States as futile and inhumane. He produces a timeless piece that can be related to present times and times to come. He maintains control throughout the entire work and uses the element of surprise to the benefit of his work. Bierce’s ability to create a dramatic, detailed story using imagery and irony to establish a vibrant mental image and produce the well-written short story of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.
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
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...