Ambrose Burnside

Peyton Farquhar is paying the price for his loyalty to the South during the Civil War at the beginning of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” Peyton Farquhar listens to a fake Confederate sol-dier/Union spy who gives him the idea to burn the bridge which ultimately leads to his death. Am-brose Bierce does an excellent job at the describing the scene in which Peyton is being hanged. The solider told Peyton that if any civilian went to the bridge that they would be hanged. Peyton disre-gards the…

Alternative ending of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge All that day he traveled, laying his course by the roundong sun. the forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it. Peyton Farquhar has escaped being hanged by a Union scout disguised as a soldier. His nuse breaks as his body falls from the bridge and instead of being suspended from the bridge he continues to fall into the stream below. He swims as fast as he ever has to get away. He is being shot at by the soldiers so…

Undaunted Courage Undaunted Courage, written by Stephan E. Ambrose, is the tale of a hero, but it is also a tragedy. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a pioneering voyage across the Great Plains and into the Rockies. It was completely uncharted territory; a wild, vast land ruled by the Indians. Lewis may have received a hero's welcome on his return to Washington in 1806, but his discoveries did not match the president's…

A detachment of one’s surrounding and substituting it by a visionary fantasy, usually happens because like most people The main character wishes for fulfillment that he does not have in his life. In Ambrose Bierce’s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Peyton Farquhar is struggling between the life he has and what he wants. The events taken place come from dire need to show himself and others how loyal he is to the southern cause during the Civil War. For this response he puts himself in a…

Plot Manipulation in Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” In Bierce’s short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” the author deftly manipulates the plot in order to suspend the reader’s disbelief and to keep the reader engaged in the story. The reader, along with what might be described as the soul of Peyton Farquhar (a man hanged by soldiers), is led to believe that Farquhar survives the plunge off of Owl Creek Bridge and the subsequent tightening of the noose. However,…

In the short story Sonny’s Blues, by James Baldwin and short story The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, by Ambrose Bierce, the narrators included related events throughout the short stories. For instance the protagonists, Sonny and Farquhar, both dealt with family affairs and getting punished due to their past actions. However, the two short stories, both share similar, yet different symbols that connected to the protagonists, the theme of not everyone gets a second chance, which includes a style…

Story of an Hour & An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge: Freedom In the short stories, “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce both characters try to reach for there freedom in society. When having freedom, you have the power or the right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint (dictionary.com). As they reach for freedom it is taken away because of the actions they committed. “The story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, a…

Although war is often idealized as an opportunity for wealth and glory, such aggressive patriotism only results in death in the end. In “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce, Bierce communicates the idea that war brings only death and anguish by utilizing literary devices in order to convey this theme. Bierce particularly uses irony and similes in order to convey the message that war does not yield glory. Instead, he employs these literary devices in order to reveal that war is…

Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” ends with this stark imagery: “Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of Owl Creek bridge” (151). This line presents a cold, distant, and annotative description of death; there is little to invoke the representation of the life that has been lost. Yet, Bierce’s narrative up to this point has succinctly painted the picture of that life, its final moments and its desire to keep…

As we view the evolvement of American literature, we begin to move away from the transcendentalist impressions of writers, and move toward a more realistic notion. The texts and authors of this era were greatly influenced by the circumstances around them: the American Civil War, the rush to the Alaskan Yukon for gold, or the Industrial Revolution, which incited them to see the world in a different light than those before them. To a reader with little to no knowledge on the background of the…