Owl Creek Bridge Word Choice

Ambrose Bierce is the author of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”. The short story, often described as uncanny, takes the reader into an imaginary journey led by the main character, Farquhar as he is hanged. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” receives criticism on Bierce’s narrative technique. Critics such as Peter Stoicheff, Harriet Kramer Linkin, and James G. Powers, all discuss the purpose of the word choice made by Bierce throughout the story. Although Stoicheff, Powers, and Linkin discuss the purpose of the word choice that Bierce made, they do not completely agree. Stoicheff and Linkin believe that the purpose of the word choice in the third section of the short story is used as a bridge between reality and Farquhar’s fantasy. As Farquhar …show more content…
According to Stoicheff, the journey Farquhar imagined underwent a particular path because of the feelings and actions Farquhar was enduring while he was being hanged. Stoicheff states that “The ostensible ‘explosion’ (41) of the cannon that ‘was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond’ (41) are Farquhar’s dreamed revision[s] of the sound of his own neck breaking” (Stoicheff 352). The critic implies that the word choice allows there to be a connection between the fantasy Farquhar is imagining and what is truly happening to him as he dies. The word choice is used to give a descriptive image accompanied by sounds that are similar to that of a neck cracking, which according to Stoicheff represents Farquhar’s neck. Stoicheff believes that the experience that Farquhar is having in reality, affects the path that his imaginary journey unravels. The word choice that Bierce made show the “[consistent] weaving [of] external stimuli into the details of Farquhar’s dream narrative of escape” (Stoicheff 351). Stoicheff believes that there is a connection between the narrative technic that Bierce uses, specifically the word choice, to the journey that Farquhar