Wednesday, November 26, 2008

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

While I was reading through this story, my initial reaction was that it was really odd and that he must be dreaming or something. Then, when I got to the end and his neck was snapped, I kind of saw it coming. My reasoning for this was that in the first section, right before the sergeant steps aside of the plank Farquhar talked about trying to escape. Also, I believe that after the sergeant stepped aside, Farquhar was having an experience where his life was sort of passing before his eyes where when he is about to embrace his love he finishes his fall onto the noose. I also thought that his escape in section three couldn't have been real because of all the fire that he escaped out of unscathed.
I believe that Bierce wrote this story to express a new type of writing style at the time, and also to describe what type of things went on during the Civil War on the front lines. As he served in the Union army, I believe Bierce may have encountered situations such as this story describes, where they would send out a spy to trick the confederate sympathisers into committing treason so that they could be executed. Is this kind of skulduggery moral? I don't know. As they say, all is fair in love and war.

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