Owlcreek Bridge Essay, Research Paper

The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge was a great story. The way the author made you feel like you were actually Peyton Farquhar. I felt like I was about to be hanged myself, the story was extremely clever. You think that he actually frees himself from the rope right after the sergeant steps to the side to actually let him hang. The author makes it so you don’t know what happens until the end. You have a slight feeling but your not sure of what is going to happen. Bierce has a tricked the audience that Peyton has freed himself from the tight rope around his neck and is in this life threatening run away from these men. He’s being chased and shot at while he’s violently swimming downstream avoiding gunfire. In Peyton’s daydream he is being shot at and it gets so convincing to the audience as well as himself that he feels the bullet in the water go and get stuck between his neck and collar. He actually feels the heat form the bullet and goes to grab it out. Another way it is so convincing is that he can actually feel the swollen and bruised section on his neck from the rope. I think it is somewhat expected to find that he indeed didn’t save himself. The sad thing is that when he finally reaches his home and wife, he awakes to a bright light and the sound of something like a cannon. He is really dead and it is when he falls through the bridge and the rope breaks his neck. He then swings left to right underneath the owl creek bridge. So the whole time that he is dreaming this about escaping, he is actually in the process of dieing.