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How Does An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge End

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The concept of time changes with traumatic events. The duration of these stretches an intermediate length, allowing one to remember former fallacies and lament on what led to this dire situation. In his short story, The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Ambrose Bierce illustrates an execution and its effect on the mental processing of the victim. The passages following the hanging of Mr. Farquhar showcase a separate style from the exposition. As his mind shuts down from asphyxiation, his experiences become wrought with imagery and alliteration, such as “dancing driftwood” (Bierce 2). In addition to leaving the linearity of the normal timestream, Mr. Farquhar has begun a journey into the surreal as he loses consciousness. The flashback recounts …show more content…

Farquhar’s efforts to escape his inevitable fate for the briefest of moments, “he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck...then all is darkness and silence!” (Bierce 8) This represents the final fusion between the narratives. His neck has most likely broken from the fall and his body has asphyxiated, leading to death. While recounting his assumed escape, the author introduces the main character's death in a seemingly abrupt fashion, when Mr. Farquhar has actually been dead for a greater span of time. In this way, it is perceived that the entirety of the narrative takes place in the span that it takes for the rope to catch Mr. Farquhar's fall, the barest second. This represents the dilation of time throughout the story, allowing the experience of the main character to stretch out for a seemingly long amount of time, as it did in the past, but in effect, is only iterated for a second. Bierce utilizes two different techniques to disrupt the linear timestream in his short story The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. The duration of Mr. Farquhar’s experience is stretched over an extended period of time, and, yet fused with the present. Traumatic experiences seem to stretch over an era, while those treasured seem the merest second. The perspective of how time is perceived presents a unique viewpoint on a series of coinciding

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