Reflection: An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge

An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge was a very interesting story in my opinion. The combination of the flash back and the flash forward really caught me off guard. The use of the tools was very awkward. This was a sad story I thought. The story really had a touch of reality I thought. Because Ambrose Bierce actually fought in the Civil War, the story was probably pretty accurate (D'Ammassa). I thought that the story was really sad because the poor guy did not even have anyone to come to his rescue. I thought that he should at least have someone to be there and witness his death. His wife is probably still sitting at home waiting for her hubby to come back home. The soldiers that killed Farquhar were really harsh because they bribed him into doing the crime in the first place. I think that they should not have given him the death sentence because he really did not do anything that was too terribly wrong. I think that the ideas of Emerson are present in this story because he did not want slavery. I think that the ideas of Emerson said that he was not for slavery. Because the soldiers were fighting against slavery. At the very end of the story, you find out what was going at the very end of the story when he actually falls through and is strangled. I think that this was also kind of an example of Thoreau because he was also punished by the government. He was all for standing up for what you believe is right. I think that would have helped out Mr. Farquhar in the story because he was doing something that he even knew was not right to do. This was one of the first works that I have read in Realism that was set in Nature. I thought the author did a really good job of making the setting visual for the reader. Thoreau was a big fan of Nature in his literary works.

D'Ammassa, Don. "'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge'." Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror Fiction. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

Bierce, Ambrose. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” Online http://fiction.eserver.org/short/occurrence_at_owl_creek.html. January 18, 2011.