Off the Edge

Carlos Espinoza
February 2, 2010

ENL 3

Andrew Hageman

Off the Edge

Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is a uniquely structured story. The story is unique because most of the story is told in 3^rd person omniscient with the exception of the transitions to 3^rd person subjective. The transition that caught my attention the most was between the first and second scene. The whole first part of the story describes the federal soldiers preparing to hang a man off the edge of Owl Creek Bridge. Part one leads up to the moment right before they let the man drop. The sentence after that flashes back in time and introduces the man being hung, his wife and a federal soldier. This flashback left me at the edge of my seat; I was not expecting the scene to suddenly go back in time. The whole first part of the story got me so anxious to see where all of the setting descriptions were leading to. Ambrose Bierce leaves me hanging as he continues to unfold his story.

I enjoyed Ambrose Bierce’s manipulation of chronological order in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” I am a big fan of the tool in movies and it has now transferred over to writing as well. I like to be kept on my toes, wanting to turn the page and keep reading to find out the “whole story.” The story begins with a man, Payton Farquhar, who is about to be hung off of the Owl Creek Bridge, then introduces Payton and his wife with a bit of background in the second part, then finally in the third part finishes the story with the description of Payton Farquhar’s struggle for survival.

Another transition that I really enjoyed was in the third part of the story when the lieutenant says to his men, “Attention, company!..Shoulder arms!...Ready!...Aim!...Fire!” and Payton dives as deep as deep as he could underwater to escape the bullets (6). As I read this part in the story I imagined the camera or the point of view focused on Payton in the creek when all of a sudden the dialogue quickly moves the shifts the attention to the soldiers and then right after they fire, the camera zips back to Mr. Farquhar as he navigates through the water.