The events of Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” all occur with in the last few minuets of Peyton Farquhar’s life. Subtle shifts in narration are present but often hard to detect in this work . The first section of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is written exclusively in objective point of view with omniscient narration . Whereas other parts are written in first person, told from Payton Farquhar’s point of view, resembling that of an interior monologue. These shifts in narration are key in furthering evidence the disassociation Farquhar has with his situation.
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” opens with an objective description of the situation, “A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water
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It is mot literally what happened but what he is imagining. He imagines that the rope broke and he fell into the creek below the bridge. Bierce has established that the creek is flooded, swirling, and moving swiftly. This would explain how Farquhar could be carried out of rifle range so quickly and would be hard to hit, the entire long section describes his thoughts and feelings and could be described as an “internal monologue” but it could also be considered the proghtive of the omniscient narrator who could go backwards and forwards in time and into the mind of any character.
Section 3 delivers the shocking ending. The reader has been beguiled into believing that Farquhar has escaped hanging and is on his way back to his home, wife, and possibly even children. Then at the very end, when he is about to “clasp his wife” he “feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck” and the narrative moves backwards in time to the Owl Creek Bridge , where the end is told from a dispassionate, objective point of view.“Payton Farquhar was dead, his body , with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek