The title of the short story I chose to analyze is Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce. The story is set in the South during the Civil War. The main character in the story is a man by the name of Peyton Farquhar. He differs from most main characters in stories in that we originally know little about him. In this paper, I intend to discuss the change that happens in the life of Peyton Farquhar from the beginning of the story to the end. That change is one that is hard to discover because of the fact that we know little about him. However, its easy to see that he does go through changes regarding the way he perceives life, love and the world in general.

The character is developed, strangely, in the middle of the story. The beginning of the story sets the scene of a man preparing to be hanged for war crimes off of a bridge (928, 1). At first, we get the scene explained to us in great detail but know little about the man being hanged himself. We see soldiers in uniform standing on the bridge. We see the river running underneath the bridge. We are given the details about the preparation for the hanging including the exact way that it is to be done (929, 4). It isn

The third section of the story is where we learn about the changes taking place inside of Peyton Farquhar. It begins with Farquhar falling down, through the bridge, during his hanging. The rope breaks, however, and he is sent falling towards the river below (931, 9). The descriptions given during this section of the story are very poetic and picturesque. We see Farquhar struggling to break free of the ropes he is tied up with. We also know that he is in a considerable amount of pain. He goes on to struggle his way downstream while being shot at by the soldiers on the bridge. He seems very disillusioned by what is going on and is constantly described as being tossed and turned about. Somehow, throughout this entire ordeal, Farquhar manages to keep his wits about him and think quickly and cleverly in order to try to save his life. Farquhar is now noticing certain things about his surroundings that he didn’t notice before. For example, after freeing himself from the ropes, it is stated that, “He felt the ripples on his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. he looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf - saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass.” (932, 2) This is all obviousl

Some topics in this essay:
Peyton Farquhar, Civil War, section story, Ambrose Bierce, peyton farquhar, life love world, life love, death experience, wife children, entire ordeal, 935 2, normal human, soldiers bridge, beginning story,