CAD+Overview

=An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge=

**//__Themes__//**

 * Time** - The author writes the story with events happening at diverse times of the story. It was the chronology of all the events that were introduced at different times of the story with his recollections and memories. So instead of describing a story of Fahrquhar and his wife at the beginning, it was introduced as his remembrance while he is preparing to be hanged. The story doesn't flow from his time with his wife to his death, but more of his recollections nearing the end of his life.


 * Nostalgia** - By expressing the main character's mental escape to his wife, the author shows the character's desire to be reunited with his past life. Reality starts to set in Peyton Fahrquhar's mind that he is going to be executed and the story flows into another story, one of escape. That story in turn tells about Fahrquhar and the way he creates a getaway from his inevitable demise. The mere fact that the ending to his fictitious story leads him to his wife just denotes the way he wants to return to his past. A past that didn't include the Civil War and the struggles up until the time he is nearing his end.

**//__Background__//**
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is a riveting short story by, Ambrose Bierce. He based this story about a troublesome event in which the South was versus the North in a fight for a united belief of slavery. The Civil War caused 618,000 military deaths. But with the deaths over 4 million slaves, they were emancipated and the United States had become a more unified nation.

**//__Author's Purpose__//**
Bierce’s purpose involved telling stories of cruelty and death. He had a pessimistic view on the world. He fought in the Civil War and wanted to express how horrible it was. Bierce wanted to show the fighting between the North and South. It tells of the story of a Southern farmer who is going to be hung by the Northern Army for trying to destroy the railroad bridge at Owl Creek.

**__//Summary//__**
The whole story follows a man named Peyton Fahrquhar through his journey of execution. Fahrquhar is seen at the beginning of the story as a man about to face his death, by being hung and throughout this whole process, Fahrquhar recollects on his personal life and ends up creating a scenario in his mind. The story starts off with Fahrquhar being led to the site of his hanging and there are vivid descriptions of his surroundings such as; soldiers, the bridge, and the captain to command Fahrquhar's demise. Fahrquhar seems panicked and nervous as he grows nearer to his end and that is when his mental novel comes into play. He imagines the soldiers attempting to shoot him but being unsuccessful and somehow he escapes the rope and is taken away by the river. The scenes play out with his ultimate arrival to his home where his loving wife awaits him, but all he finds in her embrace is reality. For at the moment that he reaches to touch her, he feels a sharp pain in his neck and the reality that he has been shot and is hanging off of the bridge that he thought he had escaped.

__**Relating to Realism and Naturalism**__
[|Realism] in literature is when an author states and describes things as they are. The author doesn't try to make them all cheery and happy if it was about a tragic event. The author stays real to what was happening by using realism. Bierce stays true to realism by describing a hanging during the Civil War. The event Bierce describes stays true to that time period during the Civil War and helps express what might be going through someone's mind when faced with execution. [|Naturalism] is very similar to realism in the way of telling how things really are. Bierce uses naturalism by making this story believable. He told the story of a Southern farmer who is going to be hung by the Northern Army because of trying to destroy the bridge. In the farmer’s last moments before death, he imagines of escaping and going back to his wife. It shows what someone would be thinking about before that final moment, and wouldn't everyone want to escape and go back to the ones they love.

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