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An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge Literary Analysis

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The One Thing Man Cannot Escape In 1976, the Blue Öyster Cult told the World not to fear the reaper. Even though it happens to every living organism, humans have a contradictory fear of dying. This aversion to death is a prominent theme among all types of literature. In the book Slaughterhouse- Five by Kurt Vonnegut and short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce, the main characters fear death so much that they create an alternate reality to avoid it. Billy Pilgrim from Slaughterhouse-Five also tries to avoid his ultimate demise by living in the nostalgia of his past and staying away from the future. In the play Endgame by Samuel Beckett, the main characters try to stay alive by remaining stagnate in their desolate world. …show more content…

He tries to live forever by creating an alien race called the Tralfamadorians. These aliens, “escape the potential despair by a theory of the universality of time which allows them to slip away from present difficulties into past or future happiness” (O'Sullivan). Pilgrim quickly accepts this idea and it allows for him to travel through time and to a happier memory when something bad happens to him. Even at certain times he is taken to the planet Tralfamadore where he is, “trapped in the amber of [that] moment” (Vonnegut 77). Pilgrim’s travels to this planet are what open his mind to time travel and how to escape dismal times. Peyton Farquhar in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” also follows a similar fate. The readers of this story, “ wander with [Farquhar] through a field of illusions which become more attractive as [he escapes] the confines of reality” (Folsom). Throughout the story, Farquhar manages to escape death multiple times, from the initial hanging to cannon blasts from Union soldiers. Eventually, Farquhar and the readers are convinced that he escapes until, “[Peyton] feels a stunning blow upon the back if the neck… Then all is darkness the silence” (Bierce). It turns out that the “occurrence” is just the main character being hanged, not the outlandish adventure that Farquhar

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An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is a story created by literary genius Ambrose Bierce and is set during Civil War times… The short story tells the narrative of Peyton Farquhar, a sympathizer of confederates who has been sentenced to his end by lynching from the Owl Creek Bridge…An occurrence at owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce shows why having an imagination is critical in making it through impossible times… An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is a richly formulated observation on the flowing nature of time and need for imagination when a person going through tricky situation in his life… In the short story, the main character, Farquhar, generates his dream world out of desperation… Farquhar is on the verge of death, and imagining that escape

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528 Words | 3 Pages

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.

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766 Words | 4 Pages

Only telling the readers the dialogue, actions, and the settings of the characters in the small american town. Making it seem normal until they reveal what actually happens in the long standing gruesome tradition of the lottery. While in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is also in 3rd person point of view; the readers are only limited to the characters thoughts. Which in the ending is accomplished when it is revealed the man being hung (Farquhar) thoughts are cut short. The two stories share the same point of view and both were told by a narrator.

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1001 Words | 5 Pages

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.

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1452 Words | 6 Pages

Rogelio Ochoa Freed Period 2 Feb 8, 2023 Perception of Owl Creek Bridge One may see something as they want it to be instead of how it really is. The story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce takes place in Alabama. Peyton Farquhar the protagonist of Beirce’s story is a man who is to be hanged and takes place on Owl Creek Bridge. Farquhar was told that anyone who tried interfering with the railroad construction that was happening on the bridge would be hanged.

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541 Words | 3 Pages

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

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749 Words | 3 Pages

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.

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814 Words | 4 Pages

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" begins with the capture of the protagonist Peyton Farquhar, a plantation and slave owner. Bierce paints a vivid picture of the surroundings around Farquhar as he awaits to be hanged. It then flashes back to the days leading up to the hanging. Where Farquhar was deceived by a federal spy claiming to be a confederate soldier. In the end, we see Farquhar escape from reality as he is serving his sentence to finally his demise.

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1117 Words | 5 Pages

Farquhar was able to deviate away from the reality of his death through his vivid imagination. He escaped all the pain that he otherwise would have felt. Upon falling down the bridge, his defense mechanism kicked in and led him to imagine an escape he desired. He didn’t feel any pain for he quickly “lost consciousness and was as one already dead.” He was not in fear during his last moments because he believed that “despite his suffering … he now (stood) at the gate of his own home.”

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425 Words | 2 Pages

In conclusion, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” demonstrates several foreshadowing techniques to predict Farquhar’s fate, such as imagery and preternatural plot elements. The preternatural ability to hear a watch ticking at a vociferous volume reveals that Farquhar was simply imagining that his time is ticking away. Also, the use of imagery when he is unnaturally describing the distant trees in great detail shows that he is dreaming about that as well and not living in reality, so he has not escaped the fact that he will die in real

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1404 Words | 6 Pages

A rope closely encircled his neck” (Bierce pg 189). Farquhar was going to be hung for his crime and although it looked like I defended his actions I don’t defend the punishment, all I am saying is when a man

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“I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to war” (61). A main theme in The Things They Carried is how a man must find a way to overcome fear.

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1206 Words | 5 Pages

Ambrose Bierce explains the water below Farquhar’s feet with such extreme detail that one can imagine the “'humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies' wings, [and] the strokes of the water-spiders' legs” (Bierce) reading the story. Using this technique helps the reader further focus and comprehend the message of the short story, the cruel Civil War is romanticized. In addition to the imagery, Ambrose Bierce’s well known short story also includes a significant theme of the contrast of a soldier’s glory with the reality of war. In “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” Farquhar enters a dream-like delusion of escaping the bullets and his unavoidable hanging, only to be suddenly awakened by the reality of the cruel situation- he was going to be hanged. Bierce creates Peyton Farquhar as a character whose romantic ideals blind him from the harsh truth of war, and therefore contributes to the overall theme contrasting the idealistic mindset of soldiers and the gruesome reality of

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971 Words | 4 Pages

The story begins with Confederate farmer, Peyton Farquhar, staring down into the water, noose around his neck, surrounded by soldiers who are responsible for his unfortunate demise. In the moments leading up to his hanging, his reality and perception of time become distorted and, "A sound which he could neither ignore nor

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640 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel “SlaughterHouse five” written by Kurt Vonnegut and published in 1969, Kurt Vonnegut talks about the inevitability of death and how it makes you think back on important things from your life. “Slaughterhouse Five” is a fictional anti-war novel that follows the main character ‘Billy Pilgrim’. In the novel Billy becomes “unstuck in time” which allows him to live at all times of his life in a non-linear story line. In the novel death is a relevant issue that Billy Pilgrim struggles to understand which is represented by the "time traveling" that forces him to reflect on all of the experiences he has lived through. Therefore, the inevitability of death in this novel forces readers to think about universal experiences that display the

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