His final thoughts and sensations:
His final thoughts were that he escaped the men that were killing him. And he runs back to his wife. However, thing that doesn't seem so believable is that when he falls into the river he sees everything so lucidly and vividly. And while he is running away he stops to smell the flowers while men were chasing hime. Yet, the images he has of his wife, the very last nanoseconds before his death, was one of the last things he thought about. I believe that, that was realistic because he imagining that he ran away to be with his wife, and if she's that important to him, it proves that a person can think about things or people they love before they die. The author shows that he thinks about the most important thing he tried to do or wanted to to before he died. By this character's stream of consciousness, the author tries to take us on a trip inside a person's mind before they come in contact with death.
Notes on "An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
The thoughts and sensations clearly prove that they are realistic by the descriptions and thoughts the character puts into them. His last thoughts state how he is proud to escape his death and return home to his family. Farquhar's thoughts were scattered as he fell off the bridge with the rope breaking. He thought he had escaped death but actually lost. When the rope broke, causing him to fall into the water, he was able to see the utterly smallest things. A quote from the narrator about the character tells what he was experiencing, "His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it he found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it." This quote clearly tells the reader that the character is in serious pain and believes he had escaped the bold men. The thoughts that ran through his mind were foreshadowing what he had thought before he had died. By this character's stream of consciousness, the author tries to take us on a trip inside a person's mind before he/she comes in contact with death.
Do you believe that he could've thought those thoughts within the last seconds before he died?
Yes, I think he could've thought those thoughts within the last seconds before he died because thoughts in a person's mind can go by very fast. We don't notice it, but right before we do a simple action, in our minds we are thinking about it.
