Occurence-NO



__**Major Theme**__ Bierce uses a complex narrative structure to advance the theme of time in "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". He distorts the reader's sense of time by revealing at the end of the story that Farquhar imagined his breaking away just before he was hanged. This structure carefully withholds critical information about time and time parameters in the event of the fantasy in which Farquhar escapes to his wife. In doing this the reader does not have a sense of Farquhar's dream as being only a dream yet, unbeknown to the reader it seems that he truly did escape from the Union Army.
 * Time**

"No matter how lucky Peyton Farquhar was in eluding his executioners the first time they tried to hang him, and no matter how far away he thought he had made it from all his troubles, in the end he could not escape his fate of having his neck “in the hemp”. " Adam DiDomenico



Bierce was born in rural Ohio to a family with 12 brothers and sisters. When the Civil War began, he enlisted in the Union Army and lived through many battles. He was regarded as a highly pessimistic writer and influenced a future generation of writers, including Ernest Hemingway.
 * Ambrose Bierce**





[|Ambrose Bierce]

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, by Ambrose Bierce, was a novel telling the story about a man facing death by getting hanged off a bridge. The story takes you into the imagination of a man named Peyton Farquhar who dreams about escaping and cheating death and running for freedom. The reverie that he was generating in his mind starts at the same scenario he was at in the beginning of the story: He was standing on a block of wood at the side edge of the bridge, prepared by his executioners to be killed when the command was given. Once he was pushed off the bridge the rope snapped off and he fell into the creek. The desire he had to live gave him the strength and potency to swim his hardest down the stream as he was being shot by the soldiers who surrounded him. As he reached land he laughed in joy for escaping and cheating his death and then he began to run far away from the soldiers and as he was running he had vivid hallucinations of his wife waiting for him to come back to her. As he finally imagined his wife in front of him at that exact moment that he tries to touch her the dreamlike sequence ended rapidly. The story switches back to reality, and the reader can see that Peyton had actually imagined everything, and was now dead.
 * __Summary of the Novel__**

Realism is evident in the story by the way that Bierce writes. He was a very dark and pessimistic writer, and his story clearly mirrors these traits. If he had been an optimistic writer, Peyton really would have survived the hanging and would have escaped the freedom. It is perhaps Ambrose's views on the civil war that are portrayed in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. He fought in some of the bloodier battles of the war, and saw many of its horrors, which led to his creation of a dark story where somebody's hope is crushed and he is powerless to change his future. This could be similar to the position slaves were in, except Lincoln did eventually issue the emancipation proclamation, so the slaves got their own happily ever after ending (which we all know wasn't happy, seeing as they were hated on for a long time after that).
 * [|Realism]**

Naturalism is the outgrowth of realism which is typically used in work of theater film. This literature style is what creates the visual imageries or illusions in the human mind. Ambrose Bierce’s method of using naturalism in the story can be very reasonable. He utilizes naturalism in the story by means of making the situation possible and making clear that naturalism happens in the everyday life. So referring to the story, when Farquhar has his last minutes standing on the edge of the bridge he generates an imagery in his mind of him cheating death. He imagines himself running back home to his family with his wife waiting for him in front of the house. Even if the imagery he had in his mind was not occurring in real life this illusion of his is something that is totally possible for any human being to generate as well if it came down to that same situation he was in. Human beings are capable of having the propensity to generate an imagery in their mind if they knew that they were to die.
 * [|Naturalism]**

Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.

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