An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge was a story written by Ambrose Bierce. He wrote it to be a suspenseful and confusing short story. The suspense brought on by Bierce employed to clench one's attention throughout this short story by using numerous literary techniques. With his use of imagery Bierce displayed that, in his mind, Farquhar, while being hanged, still had all of his thoughts and he believed that he was escaping the army, bringing suspense to the story. Farquhar thought that the rope had snapped and that he had fallen into the water, he imagined himself escaping the military by swimming away. After he got to shore, Farquhar began to run, he ran as far as he could until he made it back home. While running all he thought about was
He drove to the nearest pier and found a boat to take him out on the water to see the shearwaters. Once he finally sees the birds, he realized that Shearwaters can't live alone because when he saw the birds, they were making noise and the birds were in a flock. He realized he needs to be with his
A California town, outcasts, cheaters, a battle against nature and jumping frogs… that might sound like the premise for an epic novel, but these are a mix of elements from two separate short stories, The Outcasts of Poker Flat by Bret Harte and The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain. Harte’s story follows John Oakhurst, a professional gambler, who has become an outcast in the small California town of Poker Flats during the gold rush. His success as a gambler leads to a negative reputation and he is forced to leave the town along with a band of outcasts. A few conflicts arise, but none so severe as the blizzard that strikes them while they’re in the mountains. Oakhurst’s life of gambling success is long gone and all the bad luck he encounters leads him to suicide (Harte 674-684).
Ambrose Bierce uses characterization, irony, and foreshadowing to create forms of suspense in An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge. In part one of the story, Bierce creates suspense in the form of expectancy by characterizing who Peyton Farquhar is thought to be by directly telling what he looks like. He states: He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good--a straight nose, firm mouth...dark hair combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well fitting coat...
Ambrose Bierce pulled us through a twisted tale of a confederate man, Peyton Farquhar, who is being hung for a crime that he had committed. Peyton, in the story, has this illusion that he escapes the threshold of death and is about to reach his wife until, just as he is about to embrace her, dies. The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge's surprise ending is shown through multiple occasions of foreshadowing, using suggestive language, and scenarios where it is too good to be true.
In “An Occurance At Owl Creek Bridge,” Ambrose Bierce carefully hides the theme in ways that use detail, flashbacks, and conflict, forcing the reader to deeply analyze the text in order to find the qualities that make a story complete. There are many elements in this story that relate to humans and the way they act in real life, which the author put lots of thought into. He begins the story with specific detailing that starts
In literary terms foreshadowing is a method by which the author uses specific verbiage in a story to tell, or foreshadow, what is going to happen. The reader may feel as if they know what is going to happen before they read it, they could feel like a clairvoyant or that they are having a déjà vu experience. Ambrose Bierce’s story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” has instances of foreshadowing that allude to the death of Peyton Farquhar before the story reaches the climactic point of telling of his fate. The first instance of foreshadowing is when Peyton Farquhar thinks that he can escape the hangman’s noose and swim home.
The river represents death in this story, the language being used to describe it is harsh and is overall very negative. The only reason why Farquhar ends up in the river is that he was hung and dropped down, this is the main reason why the river represents death. In the story's first chapter, Farquhar describes the river as moving madly when staring at it head-on, but when he sees a piece of driftwood moving along the stream, he describes it as sluggish. The thought of death can be extremely off-putting for people, so when Farquhar is staring it right in the face his perception of it is thrown off because he is frightened by it.
Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” revolves around the manipulation of time through the conflict of man versus nature. Bierce uses time in his favor as he switches between the past and the present life of the main character, Peyton Farquhar, as he lives his last moments. He uses this to show how time can be “subjective and phenomenal during times of emotional distress”. (BookRags). The manipulation of time that is unnoticeable whilst reading the story strengthens the themes that are present in this work, such as man’s denial of mortality, and the conjuring of irrational situations.
Throughout the course of the story, the author takes the reader back and forth between time and has a strange flow of it. As readers, we found out Farquhar’s name and what happened after he fell through the bridge. It connects back to how Farquhar tries to manipulate time and reality but ultimately leads to his death. By moving between the present and the past, it shows how much Farquhar lacks control of time. In the story, Bierce writes, “The sergeant stepped aside.
He talked about the guards on the bridge being similar to stone statues which tells us that they barely move. This frequent use of extreme symbolism helped to give the reader the idea that Farquhar is already dead for almost all of act III. Thanks to the symbolism it helps the reader stay connected to the story and hang on to the end.
Farquhar gets captured by the Union troops and he realizes that he’s going to die from getting hanged. Meanwhile, the noose is around Farquhar neck and he starts to daydream about the possibility of noose breaking and falling into the creek. He then escapes the Union troops, and finds himself back home where his wife awaits him. As soon as he tries to embrace his wife he is forced back into reality by being hanged.
Suspense is what makes a book become an outstanding book. This is why Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, heaped suspense into the book. Interestingly, suspense is defined as a state or feeling of excited or anxious uncertainty about what may happen. Lee uses numerous literary techniques to develop suspense in the story. Two that she uses to employ suspense is cliffhangers and imagery.
In “The Pit and the Pendulum”, the author manages to incorporate suspense into several parts of this story. One example is where it states, “I was sick—sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence—the dread sentence of death—was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum.” This shows how the author created suspense by not telling the reader about why the narrator was receiving a death sentence.
Guns cracking, cannons roaring, and the final plank of an execution is heard by spectators splashing into the water below during one of the most remarkable struggles in American history. The setting of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” takes place during the Civil War. Ambrose Bierce enlisted in the Civil War when he was eighteen. He uses this experience in his writing to create a more realistic setting for his short story. Bierce was a Confederate soldier, as is Peyton.
Farquhar’s watch is a good representation of his helplessness and the short matter of time left in his life. The ticking of the watch represents the amount of seconds that Farquhar has left in his life like a “death knell” (1.5), the