Owl Creek Bridge Romanticism

General Lee, society does not care for stories about the atrocities of the Civil War, or any war for that matter. However, writing about the true events of wars will insure that future generations know uncorrupted information. The Civil War was the beginning of the Realist movement in art and literature. Authors began to weave tales filled with true human emotions, rather than tell stories of heroes, like those that dominated Romantic literature. Happiness, triumph, fear, horror, true human emotions were displayed in the story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce. Although Bierce wrote a piece of fiction, the story of Peyton Farquhar accurately tells readers the thoughts of a man facing death. Farquhar is on the verge of death by hanging, when he miraculously

Through Farquhar, Bierce shows how soldiers on both sides were merciless in their acts, a fact that would never be mentioned if Romantic writings were all that remained from this era. Fast forward several decades, World War Two has consumed the planet, and officers are just as cruel as they were in the Civil War. “Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell, announces, through the form of a poem, the callousness of the military in WWII. A man thinks he is safe under the protection of the State, but the poem tells that, “When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.” (“Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell). A warrior’s death is not nearly as romantic as legends would like one to believe, and this information would never reach the public if writers, such as Jarrell, never shared their experiences and observations with others through writing. These horror stories are not restricted to the past, an article from 2006, “Healing War’s Wounds” by Karen Breslau, discusses the physical and mental hardships faced by today’s active military and