“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by: Ambrose Bierce
I enjoyed Bierce’s intense description as a narrator. He goes into immense detail about the scene in which this hanging is taking place. The hemp rope, the position and roles of the soldiers and executioners are all detailed in depth, “The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge” There is not much left to the visual imagination which is nice sometimes because you can read without hesitation.
Chapter two is a flashback to the condemned man’s life prior to his conviction. The man is a supporter of the Confederate Army and wants to help stop the Union troops advancing through Owl Creek. The man’s name is Peyton Farquhar which I thought was an odd name for a farmer. It sounds Lebanese or Middle Eastern. I wonder if that has any significance. You find out at the end of chapter two that he was set up by a disguised Union soldier. Bierce feverishly describes what this man sees and feels as he is thrashing for his life in the creek….“His neck ached horribly; his brain was on fire; his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth.” Before I reached the ending, I was a little incredulous to the ability of this man’s mental capacity to observe seemingly everything around him as he is fighting for his life….“He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf--saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the grey spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig.” In retrospect I guess that his digestion...