An Occurance At Owl Creek Bridge Essay

Many people will push themselves to their absolute limit just to be able to save themselves. In “Zombieland”, Talllhsitty he had to risk his life by going to a game at the carnival they were at and lock themselves in it to cause a distraction so Columbus could save Wichita and Little Rock from being infected by the zombies. In a way, Farquhar’s situation is similar in the way that he had to risk his life in his fantasy land by swimming away and walking home all night to his house to keep himself from being killed. Farquhar was being shot at while he was swimming and had already been injured from being hanged. In both situations though, they had to push themselves to save them from dying. In “An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge” (AOAOCB) Bierce
While that’s a good claim, it does not show how realistic his imagination was. The details and figurative language goes into depth with it. They describe all the pain and suffering he was going though as if it was actually real whereas the bridge only tells us when he transitioned from reality to fantasy.
“He looked a moment at his ‘unsteadfast footing,’ then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a sluggish stream” (Bierce 2).
This section shows how he went from seeing a very fast stream to a slow stream but, the driftwood only occurs once and doesn’t go into depth with his transition.
All in all, Bierce used sensory/specific details, comparisons, and personification in AOAOCB to show the length our imagination can go. The readers were shown with immaculate depth that even though Farquhar was imagining everything, his experience was very real. The literary devices Bierce used helped make it clear to the reader that that is what she was trying to explain. It’s things like this that can make one wonder if what is going on around them is actually