In part I Peyton Farquhar is standing on a bridge, above a body of water waiting to be hanged and in the midst of infantrymen, Peyton is trying to soothe the fear of his impending doom. Section II gives the reader some history concerning Peyton Farquhar and it possibly gives the reader an explanation for his execution. Section III shifts back into the present. When the sergeant finally begins to hang Farquhar, the rope snaps and he falls into the river and swims to safety. When he sees his wife he runs to her and upon their embrace a sharp pain strikes his neck and the rest of his body.
In the third section however by some miracle, the rope snaps as he falls into the water, and manages to escape from his executioners. Again he dies at the very end of section III even though in this part his escape seems realistic for the readers. Section III is narrated with a realistic timeline and description but it is in fact as we learn it at the end a daydream, an illusion provoked maybe by fear. Peyton Farquhar is tricked by the fear of death or even hope, triggered by “He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children” (section I, paragraph 5) or even the flashback of section II. Ambrose Bierce plays with the readers.
Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”: Reality vs. Illusion Ambrose Bierce’s short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” gives the reader an insight look on what is reality and what is illusion. Set during the American Civil War, Peyton Farquhar, a strong supporter of the Confederacy, is fixed to be hang to death from Owl Creek Bridge by the Union. The story opens up with Farquhar standing at the bridge’s edge. A flashback in the story reveals that a Union soldier disguised as a Confederate soldier lures Farquhar to demolish the bridge, but Farquhar is caught in the act.
Narrator knows what all the character are thinking and speaking for them. Plot: Peyton is standing on a plank of a bridge with a noose around his neck going to be hanged. The military are about to carry out the hanging by stepping off the plank to where Peyton will drop and thus be hung. All of a sudden, Peyton feels the sudden tightening of the noose, gasping for air. At this point the suspense is really building, the rope breaks, he falls into the water.
After the flashback, the hanging commences and as Farquhar begins to fall, the grave sensation of his death is described. But suddenly the rope breaks and Farquhar is freed dropping twenty feet down into a fast flowing river. He manages to free his hands, remove the noose from his swollen neck, and swim for freedom. The Union soldiers on the bridge fire at him, but miraculously he escapes. He then wanders through the forest back towards his home, eventually walking on a known road to his door step.
The authors writing was able to make me imagine what it would be like to be stuck swimming for my life while bullets and cannons fired at me with little hope of escaping before being hit. Then after surviving a hanging, guns, and cannons he is then thrown into the woods where he has to find his way home with no water, no food, and no rest.
The story starts out describing a man (Farquhar) on a bridge, wrists bound, and noose around his neck. Farquhar is on a loose platform, laid over train tracks, and expecting to be executed in the coming moments. There is a small squad of individuals surrounding Farquhar, in full military attire, awaiting the order to begin the execution. It is at this time that Farquhar imagines escaping the execution, and returning to the safety of his home (Bierce 300). Peyton Farquhar is a successful Alabama planter, who finds; himself, his wife, and his property very close to the front lines of the Union advancement into the Confederate controlled Southern states.
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.
Eric D. Gross Professor Duenas English 104 – Narrative Essay 7 November 2011 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge: Life in the Blink of an Eye If you found yourself about to be executed, how would you respond? Would you beg for your life? Would you resist defiantly until the very end? In Ambrose Bierce’s short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” Peyton Farquhar is a man standing in the face of his own mortality, about to be hung from the very bridge he attempted to destroy. Bierce’s narrative continually interweaves the present to the past and back to the present, leading the reader into a state somewhere between dream and reality.
The author, Ambrose Bierce, of the short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” captured the thoughts or more appropriately the hallucinations of a man during the fleeting moments of dying or that brief threshold between life and death. Peyton Farquhar is the man being hanged and is described as a Southern gentleman. The reader easily relates to this man and his plight. The reader sympathizes with the character and probably considers his hanging as unfair. The setting of the story takes place during the Civil War and thus, gives vivid descriptions of the military setting, military time and the military execution.