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| The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge | ||||||||||||||||
| 1. It creates suspense because there is a lot of unknown which stimulates the reader�s mind, and makes the readers what to learn what is really going on. It gives room for the reader to imagine the best and worst outcome of his predicament, and make their thoughts reality. The few details the author gives show that he is not a common criminal, but rather a well dressed citizen. We don�t even know why he is there. | ||||||||||||||||
| 2. Before the condemned man is hung he thinks about his wife and children. He also observes there is a river down below him. He thinks there might be a way to escape. His distorted perceptions are important because what he thinks of before he gets hanged is what he believes is happening while he is hanged. While he is falling to his death he believes that he is getting away from the people and getting to safety with his wife and kids. In reality he is just being hanged but his time and motion is completed distorted. | ||||||||||||||||
| 3. The narrator�s attitude towards Farquhar is that he is not very heroic or successful. The first time Farquhar tries to get involved into the war and be a hero he fails and gets hung. The narrator�s attitude towards the war, however, is that anything is fair in love and war. So basically the war is nothing to just mess around with, you can just be in the war, you have to be committed to it and be willing to die for your country. In Farquhar�s mind war is all just fun and games, and an easy way to become a hero. The reality of it doesn�t hit him until he is getting hung. | ||||||||||||||||
| 4. The ironic part of longing for the �larger life of a soldier� is that he thought he was being a hero, but he isn�t very good at it. This is because he was only thinking about escaping, when in reality he was still going to be hanged. �Larger life of a soldier� interprets out to being a hero and saving himself or others. He imagined that war was glory, when in reality it is about death and brutal fighting. Farquhar only thinks about escaping and saving himself, while he swims down the river. Then he is finally hung and is not a hero. His saying �all is fair in love and war� is ironic in his case because he doesn�t practice what he is preaching. He runs off to burn the bridge to be a hero and prove himself worthy, since the army didn�t want him, and ends up getting captured and killed. He thought that he could deceive the union army, when he is actually the one who is deceived by the spy. He believed that he could not die in war, and was going to be a hero. Farquhar lived by his motto, but ironically died by it too. | ||||||||||||||||
| 5. The details that show this are that he says "A counter-swirl had caught Fahrquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking at the forest on the bank opposite the fort." It shows us that he is thinking what is actually happening to him when he is swinging on the rope. Another of these details are, "By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famished." These is showing us that he is about to die, and is on his last breathe. Both of these things are connected because they show what he thinks would happen if he had not been caught. | ||||||||||||||||
| 6. His thoughts and sensations are unrealistic because during the story he gives many hints that the things he is saying are not happening. In the beginning of part three in the story it says that Farquhar drops under the bridge and passes out; left for dead. After that happens he then begins to imagine all the things that he does think about but it proves that there not true because he has already passed out and not come too yet. I could tell its not realistic because he would begin to have supernatural powers such as seeing the veins of the leafs in the far distance and also while he was swimming, in between strokes he would look up at the bridge and be able to see the color of the eyes of the man standing on the bridge. | ||||||||||||||||
| 7. The limited 3rd person narration point of view in the beginning of the story is appropriate because it makes the reader believe all of the heightened senses that Farquhar is feeling and the fact that he got away and almost got home to his family. Beirce creates this climactic scene beginning with the limited 3rd person which helps build the suspense of the story, then changes to omniscient 3rd person to reveal that the whole getaway happened in Farquhar's last thoughts before his neck snaps. | ||||||||||||||||
| Story | ||||||||||||||||
| 8. The information from the flashback being told in the second part helps create suspense for the reader during the first part, where Farquhar is being hung, and causes you to be curious of what is happening to him. He creates a suspense during the first scene, and also adds an interesting twist into the description of him, as you are trying to figure out what he did that made it so that he was going to be hung by the Northern Army. The flashback is also used to split the parts where he is being hung, and is still in tact with reality, and the part where he is in a dream where he breaks loose and gets away from the army and sees his family. | ||||||||||||||||