In a flashback, Farquhar and his wife are relaxing at home one evening when a soldier rides up to the gate. He considers the possibility of jumping off the bridge and swimming to safety if he can free his tied hands, but the soldiers drop him from the bridge before he can act on the idea. Farquhar thinks of his wife and children and is then distracted by a noise that, to him, sounds like an unbearably loud clanging it is actually the ticking of his watch. Six military men and a company of infantrymen are present, guarding the bridge and carrying out the sentence. Peyton Farquhar, a civilian and plantation owner, is being prepared for execution by hanging from an Alabama railroad bridge during the American Civil War. Bierce's abandonment of strict linear narration in favor of the internal mind of the protagonist is an early example of the stream of consciousness narrative mode. The story, which is set during the American Civil War, is known for its irregular time sequence and twist ending. Regarded as "one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature", it was originally published by The San Francisco Examiner on July 13, 1890, and was first collected in Bierce's book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891). "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (1890) is a short story by the American writer and Civil War veteran Ambrose Bierce.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |