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An Occurrence Of Owl Creek Bridge Analysis

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“An Occurrence of Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce establishes that there is no passion for romance or beauty in war. The title of the story contains the word “occurrence,” which reveals how common death is contained by war, reducing the apparent value of those whom live in this world during this time. The illusory that Farquhar has displays the danger of having misapprehensions about the war, because war is not a love story that ends with running to his or hers significant other’s arm, it has brutal and merciless penalty. An additional theme existing in the story is dying with dignity. The short story shows the reader that there is no moderation for the awful deaths that happen in war, so even efforts to have men die with dignity were lacking in pride. The final indication focused on in the story is the …show more content…

He gets his hands free, pulls the rope away, and swims to the surface to begin his escape. He swims downstream to avoid the rifle and cannon firing towards him. Once he is out of range, he leaves the water to begin the voyage to his home, 30 miles away. Farquhar walks all day long through an apparently never-ending forest. He travels on, urged by the thought of his wife and children despite the fact that he was in pain. The next morning, after seemingly fallen asleep while walking, he finds the gate to his plantation. He hurries to embrace his wife, but before he does, he feels a very sharp pain on the back of his neck; there is a flash of white and a loud noise, and everything goes dark. Bierce reveals, “Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek Bridge” (93). It is revealed that Farquhar never escaped at all; he fantasized the whole third part of the adventure during the time between falling off of the bridge and the rope breaking his

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