Bierce's An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge example essay topic

The Jumping Frog Now that brings me by a natural and easy transition to Simon Wheeler of California; a pioneer he was, and in a small way a philosopher. Simon Wheeler's creed was that pretty nearly everything that happens to a man can be turned to moral account; every incident in his life, almost, can be made to assist him, to project him forward morally, if he knows how to make use of the lesson which that episode teaches, and he used -- well, he was a good deal of a talker. He was an inordinate talker; in fact, he wore out three sets of false teeth, and I told about a friend of his one day -- a man that he had known there formerly, and who he had a great admiration for, of one Jim Smiley, and he said it was worth a man's while to know Jim Smiley. Jim Smiley was a man of gift; he was a man of parts; he was a man of learning; he was -- well, he was the curious est man about always betting on anything that turned up that you ever see, if he could get anybody to bet on the other side, and if he couldn't he would change sides. As soon as he got a bet he was satisfied. He prepared himself with all sorts of things -- tomcats, rat terrier's and all such things, and one day he ketch ed a frog; said he calculated to educate him.

And he took him home and never done nothing but set in his back yard and learn that frog how to jump. Yes, sir, and he did learn him to -- he did learn him to. When it came to jumping on a dead level there wasn't no frog that could touch him at all. Come to jump on the dead level, why, he could lay over any frog in the profession, and Smiley broke all the camps around there betting on that frog.

Bye and bye he got a misfortune. He used to keep his frog in a little lattice box. The frog's name was Daniel Webster, and he would bring that box down town and lay for a bet. And one day a fellow came along, a stranger in the camp he was, he says, 'What might it be that you have got in the box?' 'Well,' Smiley says, 'It ain't anything particular, it's only just a frog,' 'Well,' he says, 'What is he good for?' 'Well,' Smiley says, 'I don't know, but I think he is good enough -- for one thing; he can out jump any frog in Calaveras County.

' The stranger took that box, turned it around this way and that way, and he examined Daniel Webster all over very critically, and handed it back, and he said, 'I don't see any points about that frog that is any better than any other frog. ' 'Oh,' Smiley said, 'It may be that you understand frogs and may be that you are only an amateur, so to speak; anyway I will risk $40 that he can out jump any frog in Calaveras County. ' Well, that stranger looked mighty sad, mighty sorrowful -- grieved, and he said, 'I am only a stranger in camp and I ain't got no frog, but if I had a frog I would bet you. ' Smiley says, 'That's all right, just you hold my frog a minute; I will go and get you a frog. ' So Smiley lit out to the swamp and that stranger took that box and he stood there -- well, he stood, and stood, and stood the longest time.

At last he got Daniel Webster out of the box and pried his mouth open like that [indicating], took a teaspoonful and filled him full of quail shot, filled him full up to the chin and set him down on the floor. Daniel set there. Smiley he flopped around in the swamp about half an hour. Finally he coached a frog and fetched him to this fellow. They put up the money, and Smiley says: 'Now, let the new frog down on the floor with his front paws just even with Daniel's, and I will give the word. ' He says, 'One, two, three, scoot,' and they touched up the frogs from behind to indicate that time was called, and that new frog, he rose like a rocket and came down ker chunk a yard and a half from where he started, a perfectly elegant jump for a nonprofessional that way.

But Smiley's frog gave a heave or two with his shoulders -- his ambition was up, but it was no use, he couldn't budge, he was anchored there as solid as an anvil. The fellow took the money, and finally, as he went over, he looked over his shoulder at Daniel, and he said: 'Well, I don't see any points about that frog that is any better than any other frog. ' And Smiley looked down at Daniel Webster, I never see a man so puzzled. And he says: 'I do wonder what that frog throw ed off for?

There must be something the matter with him, looks mighty baggy somehow. ' He hefted him, and says, 'Blame my cats, if he don't weigh five pounds. ' Turned him upside down and showered out a hat full of shot. And Simon Wheeler said, 'That has been a lesson to me.

' And I say to you, let that be a lesson to you. Don't you put too much faith in the passing stranger. This life is full of uncertainties, and every episode in life, figuratively speaking, is just a frog. You want to watch every exigency as you would a frog, and don't you ever bet a cent on it until you know whether it is loaded or not. web 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' is the story of Peyton Farquhar, a Southern farmer who is about to be hanged by the Union army for trying to destroy the railroad bridge at Owl Creek. While the reader is led to believe he escapes under miraculous circumstances, it is revealed at the end of the story that Farquhar imagined his escape in the split seconds before his death. Peyton Farquhar appears to have been 'set-up' or tricked into attempting an act of sabotage (deliberate destruction of the Owl Creek Bridge).

Here are the details from Part 2 which reveal this to us: He is a slave-owner and secessionist from the South. He sympathizes with the Southern cause, but is 'somehow' unable to fight. Nevertheless, 'no service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure to perilous to undertake'. The 'grey-clad's soldier who comes to ask for water is not really a Confederate (Southern) soldier, but a spy from the Union army. 'He was a Federal scout. ' The soldier, disguised as a Confederate soldier in a grey uniform, tells Peyton that the Yanks (Union / Federal army) are repairing the railroads and preparing for a major attack on the South and that 'Any civilian caught interfering with the railroad... will be summarily hanged'.

Peyton, believing the soldier to be on the side of the South, shows keen interest in stopping the trains of the Union army and asks: 'Suppose a man-a civilian... should elude the picket post (guard post) and perhaps get the better of the sentinel, what could he accomplish?' In other words, if a civilian could get past the guard post and then overpower the sentinel, what could he do to sabotage the bridge? The spy (scout) suggests that there is a lot of dry wood that has piled up against the pier at the end of the bridge that would burn easily. After Bierce tells us at the close of Part II that the soldier is actually a Federal scout (spy), we can assume that Peyton (now ready to be hanged from Owl Creek Bridge) traveled the thirty mile distance to Owl Creek Bridge with a plan to burn it down, but was arrested by the Federal Army, who would have been waiting for him. The spy had obviously been trying to 'flush out' all resistance Hyperbole: Bierce's Caricature of the Southern Gentleman Caricature As you have read in Ambrose Bierce's biography, he was a sharp-tongued social critic and one-time political cartoonist. Political cartoonists typically draw comical depictions of politicians which are made funny by exaggerating and distorting certain prominent facial and physical features. Hyperbole The bitter irony and sarcasm behind the language Bierce employs in the remainder of the first paragraph of Part 2 escapes most readers.

He employs a literary technique known as 'hyperbole'. Hyperbole is an exaggerated description or overstatement used for special effect. That effect may be dramatic or comical When hyperbole is comical, is the literary equivalent of a caricature. Bierce creates this effect by drawing on the glorified language of nobility, bravery and above all, honor, to describe Peyton as Peyton would like to see himself.

Keep in mind, however, that he has just implied that Peyton is a coward who uses his money and political influence to stay out of the army. Underlined passages below highlight the exaggerations of the description. '... and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come as it comes to all in war time. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war. ' Yet, in the next paragraph, we see Farquhar and his wife 'sitting on a rustic bench'.

While other Americans are killing each other in the battlefields of the south, to preserve the inhuman practice of slavery, Peyton and his wife are 'sitting on a rustic bench'. All Bierce needed to add would have been a mint julep and a glass of lemonade and it would be just like a love scene from 'Gone with the Wind'. Symbolism But Bierce does not take his hyperbole to that extreme. Instead he inserts a symbol, through which we come to understand his bitterness toward the Farquhars. As Mrs. Farquhar gets water for the scout, he writes: 'Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands.

' What do Mrs. Farquhar's white hands symbolize or represent in the context of the American Civil War and the slavery issue? Is Peyton a soldier or a civilian? If Peyton is a civilian and not a soldier, why is he being hanged? What is his war-crime?

Somehow Peyton is unable to serve in the Confederate army. What is Bierce implying about Peyton in the first paragraph of Part 2? Pay special attention to the underlined passages: Read Part 2 carefully and try to understand how he was tricked by the scout. ' Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly-respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause.

Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with the gallant army that had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth. ' An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Pre-Story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge takes place during the American Civil War, which was fought in the USA between 1861 and 1865. The country had become divided over the issue of slavery: the Northern states (known as 'abolitionists' and / or 'federalists') wanted to end black slavery and keep the country together, while the Southern states (known as the 'secessionists') wanted to keep the institution of slavery alive to ensure low labor and production costs for cotton, tobacco and other crops. They were prepared to secede, or divorce themselves, politically from the rest of the country. The Union Army fought on behalf of the North (the Yankees), while the Confederate Army fought for the South (the Rebels). The North eventually won, the country was reunited and the black slaves in the South were eventually freed.

Farquhar's Humanitarian Will To Overcome Gloriously Throughout 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,' ' Ambrose Bierce tells not only of humanity's will to survive, but also of the willingness to become greater than, and more powerful than that which is natural. Through the illusion of Payton Farquhar we are shown the natural human desire to become victorious. The Union Army during the American Civil War of the 1860's proceeded to hang a civilian, Farquhar, because of his attempt to aid the Confederate forces. Before Farquhar paid the ultimate price, however, his mind takes him through a heroic escape. Bierce does an excellent job of describing the escape in a dream-like fashion. He shows the mind's ability to escape reality, and to escape the inevitable.

The mind is a powerful source for the human experience. Farquhar knew that his time in warfare would come, 'That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in warfare. ' ' He saw his opportunity when a disguised federal scout tricked him into involvement at Owl Creek Bridge. Farquhar considered no job to humble, so he set off and was captured by the Federal Army.

The first sighting of Farquhar's supernatural capabilities came after he closed his eyes to think about his family. 'A short distinct, metabolic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; ... They hurt his ears like the thrust of a knife... What he heard was the ticking of his watch. ' ' (Bierce 514).

The mind will enhance the senses before death. It will allow aspects of nature to be highlighted and to appear most significant. As in this case, Farquhar was able to hear a pocket watch tick in his pocket. The sound, he thought, was extremely bothersome and was almost overbearing. Like anyone would do, Farquhar planed his escape at the end of the first section. He thought about freeing his hands, throwing off the noose, and eluding the bullets in order to get home.

We can see from Payton Farquhar's dream that our visions can seem real and life-like when in desperate situations. His journey begins with the 'survival' of the fall from the bridge. '... he swings through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like vast pendulum, then all at once, with terrible suddenness... The rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. ' ' (516). As William Collogue writes in 'Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,' ' 'Farquhar hallucinates his own escape. His dream is the portrait of narcotic hallucinations [from the hemp]' (37).

One can also deduce that the pendulum swinging for a few seconds in the air might allow Farquhar's mind to divide that time infinitesimally into twenty-four hours of escape that becomes his dream (Stoicheff, 352) Farquhar started his escape; he freed his hands in the water and takes the noose off from around his neck. Bierce alludes to the dream-like nature of the hero when Farquhar congratulates himself on his feat to escape the hemp. ' What splendid effort! - What magnificent, what supernatural strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo!' ' Then he began to swim to 'safety,' ' for his mind.

'He was now in full possession of his physical senses' (516). This tells the reader that Farquhar is not only concerned for his life, but most importantly that he escaped in a heroic fashion. He gains full possession of his physical senses when the actual body is gone and all he has left is the simple few seconds of his mind. While he was swimming, he looked back and saw men in silhouette against the sun. Yet through the silhouetted black outline, somehow Farquhar could see through the snipers scope and envision that he was gray-eyed. He was able to make the gunman one of the best so that his story was more heroic.

He was able to elude bullets, and the reader gets the feeling that he is in a sort of matrix where he can defy the actual speed of the bullets, therefore giving himself time to dodge them. While he was swimming away, Farquhar said that he could fell the fish swimming under him. This is an impossible feat. He was only able to enhance his senses because he was in his dream world. When he looked out of the water, into the trees he was able to see detail like that of a supernatural being, 'He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies' wings, the strokes of the water-spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their boat -- all these made audible music.

' ' The human eye is not able to see such things without an aid, such as binoculars. The human ear cannot hear those low sounds either, without aid. Therefore, we can deduce that Farquhar is living in a dream and he is quickly becoming his hearts desire. While Farquhar was running he realized that something was not right about the interminable course, 'There was something uncanny in the revelation' (518).

One can believe that Farquhar would know the forest around his house, and he would know the streets or patches well enough to realize where he was, but at that moment it was foreign. It was foreign because the world was fake. On his journey, he managed to get tired, 'By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing' (518). Although Farquhar was continuing his thirty-mile trek to the safety of his home; the thought of his children and his wife came to mind. Ironically, this is the same idea that came to him just before he was dropped from the bridge in the first section, this foreshadowing the death of his fantasy. 'Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great garden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations' (519).

He was convinced that the stars were arranged in a different order because of his miraculous escape from the Yankee army. The world is revolving around its hero, and the mind is the first to say that this is the way it should be. Humans what to be the center of everything, and one can notice it by the effort of Farquhar's mind to do exactly that. It is interesting how when Farquhar returns home he remembers his wife as '... looking fresh and cool and sweet,' ' and as having '... a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is!' ' (519). This contradicts the way she was portrayed at the beginning of the chronological story, where we know her as simply Mrs. Farquhar.

She was portrayed as sitting on a rustic bench and lowly enough to fetch water with her white hands. Every good story needs some sort of sex appeal for the main character. Farquhar needed a final touch to his amateur heroic film. He needed a feminine loveliness and gratification standing before him (Powers 280). Therefore, he had his wife play a part that is not natural. It is only a fantasy of what he believes he should be able to come home to, after being so heroic and eluding the Yankees.

Throughout 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,' ' Ambrose Bierce portraits the dramatic escape of a bonded man and his ability to become victorious in his failure. Payton Farquhar becomes victorious in his mind's attempt to escape the reality that he brought upon himself. The Union Army during the American Civil War of the 1860's came out victorious in the war. Farquhar came out victorious in his mind while dying for the political ideals that he worked and lived for. Farquhar paid the ultimate sacrifice and lived out his dream of soldier hood because of it. Ambrose Bierce describes the escape in a dream-like fashion where the reader can get a feel of reality in the mist of a vision.

We learn from this story that we all have a choice in our lives. We have the ability to perceive ourselves as what we are, and go on living as that person, or we can see who we can be, what we have the imagination to be, and become that, at all costs. Unless we live our lives where we are capable of living them, we have wasted a life that could have been (mentally of physically). I believe that Payton Farquhar came out victorious in the fact that he fulfilled his desire as a soldier, but he failed because his wife never was able to know what he had accomplished. -- Zane G. Porter Anyone who has ever read 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' is guaranteed to never forget it. The fine characterization of the unlucky protagonist, as well as the elegantly crafted style of the narrative, work together to produce the irony that so often characterizes Bierce's writing, and causes us to marvel at its composition.

Not only is this a masterfully-written story, told with lyrical realism, but the twist of its shocking ending locks it firmly into the reader's mind. As Bierce's story begins, the protagonist, Peyton Farquhar, is about to be executed by hanging; with a noose around his neck, he stands upon a plank on the edge of a bridge, and when the plank is removed he will tumble down toward the water below -- never reaching it, however, due to the shortness of the rope which will both strangle him and break his neck. However, in that brief second between the removal of the plank and the jerk of Farquhar's body weight at the end of the rope, Farquhar manages to envision his escape. He pictures himself hitting the water, freeing his hands, swimming to safety, and being reunited with his family. He is even logical enough to realize that something about this scenario is not quite right, but somehow manages to rationalize away most of the clues that would tell us that death is taking place; he interprets the crack of his neck breaking as a rifle shot, and the natural protrusion of the tongue during strangulation as a symptom of thirst. But all the rationalization in the world will not save him, because his adventure is merely 'life passing before his eyes' in the instant before he dies.

From this 'life,' however, we learn much about the way he views his world. The time is the middle of the Civil War, and Farquhar's plantation lies thirty miles to the south of Owl Creek Bridge. It is his hope to arrive at the bridge well before the Union Army does, and use the driftwood scattered about the area as kindling to burn the bridge down. The Union forces were infamous for burning down plantation homes as they progressed through the South, and Farquhar's act was a last-ditch effort to save his home and family.

There are many aspects of Farquhar's recollections about the approach of the Union soldiers that do not quite make sense, much like the thirst and the rifle shot mentioned above. For example, Bierce tells us that they were notified of the movements of the Union Army by 'an old, grey-clad soldier' who stopped at their home for a drink. A soldier in a grey uniform is not a member of the Union Army -- otherwise Farquhar's wife would not have been so 'happy to serve him with her own white hands'; rather, he is dressed as a Confederate soldier. But he certainly seems to know a lot about Union plans for a member of the opposing side. And isn't his arrival just a bit too coincidental? It would seem more likely that this 'old grey-clad soldier' is, in fact, himself a member of the Union Army, and his visit to the Farquhars' is a trap intended to tempt loyal Confederates to try to stop the Union Army in their path.

It may seem ironic that merely by dressing as a Confederate soldier, this man could convince Peyton Farquhar to risk his own life. But this is due, of course, to the man's ability to make Farquhar believe what he wants to believe anyway. The stranger seems nice, so he must be a Confederate; he seems to be giving Farquhar an opportunity to be a hero, so he must take it. As Bierce explains, 'Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war. ' This, in short, is his moment.

He, Peyton Farquhar, would blow up the Owl Creek Bridge and stop the Northern Army in their tracks. The one critical point on which his informer lied was the number of Union reinforcements which were guarding the bridge. The informer told Farquhar that there was only 'a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of the bridge. ' There were obviously more than that, for at Farquhar's execution there are not only the executioners and officers on the bridge, but a 'company of infantry in line, at 'parade rest,' the butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. ' Farquhar's patriotism has overcome his common sense, and he was caught in a trap by the Union Army.

We readers, likewise, have been caught in Bierce's trap; without realizing it, we have been artfully seduced into Farquhar's dream. We too have believed what we wanted to believe -- and as Bierce warns us, we need to be careful about that.