Am Occurance at Owl Creek

320 Words2 Pages
Bierce, begins this story with much detail. Farquhar, a Southern gentleman who was not a rebel soldier but nonetheless a slave owner and rebel sympathizer, is standing on Owl Creek Bridge, about to be hanged. A brief flashback enlightens the reader as to why. Farquhar, having been visited by a Union soldier in disguise, was lured into trying to sabotage the bridge. After the flashback, the hanging commences. As Farquhar begins to fall, the feeling of his death is described. His writing provides sensations just through the text itself, “his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek!” (Bierce, III). As this story unravels it is as if we are living this event first hand. One may agree that with the imagery Bierce provided he brought our senses to life, for example, when Farquhar finally reached the bank of the stream, “saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf” (Bierce, III). I can picture the vivid details of a leaf, a simple illustration of life, or as he “inhaled the fragrance of their blooms” (Bierce, III). The writing brought me closer with every real life detail he depicted. I was able to imagine the anguish, the intensity, the anxiety and the relentlessness Farquhar was undergoing. This is a realistic story; the events remained factual to the picture he was painting. His use of time kept me engaged due to the tangible events. This piece remained realistic to me through the climax and still after the Denouement. When the “stunning blow upon the back of the neck…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, III) I then realized the story was a
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