An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge Essay

Death remains one of the greatest mysteries ever faced by humanity, one that many have tried to decode, despite their ultimate futility. Death may be perceived in many different ways; whether one chooses to view death as the true end of life or see it as a journey to another, better life, it is still absolutely inevitable. In gripping fashion, Ambrose Bierce offers up his idea of what death is like in his popular short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” During the heat of the American Civil War, a Southern sympathizer by the name of Peyton Farquhar is faced with the enigma of dying. Farquhar has been set up by Northern spies, and he now faces summary hanging for attempting to sabotage Owl Creek Bridge. As gravity cruelly pulls him to his untimely fate, his mind throws him into a fantastical delusion where his perceptions of reality are skewed and he believes he escapes to his home. However, whether through the subtle hints provided by Bierce or the plain description at the end of the story, we realize that Farquhar is actually dead, and never really escaped. So despite the sheer unknown presented by death, Bierce attempts to question what may really be behind the veil of mortality with Farquhar's surreal trip through purgatory. The main bulk of the story is Farquhar’s escape
In this way, Bierce is offering not only what he thinks life may be like, but also what death may be like. Indeed, he spends pretty much the entirety of this story attempting to show what death may really be like, despite the simple fact that people can’t, and likely never will, know what it is like. In this way, this story is more fantasy fiction than it is realistic fiction. Nothing about Farquhar’s experiences, besides his actual demise, are realistic. Everything he experiences are perceptions of a skewed reality caused by his dying