Analysis Of An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge

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The first story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce, took place during the Civil War. The time period of the story effected how things happened. The story first starts out by telling you that there is a man looking down at a flowing water. It then tells you that he has a rope around his neck. The begging of the story tells the reader that this person is about to get hung. It informs the reader that the man is going to die. The story then jumps back to tell the reader how this man got into this situation. The man who was going to be hung was Peyton Ferquahar. Peyton Ferquahar was a solder for the South during the Civil War. In the story, a solder from the North had come to Peyton Ferquahar dressed as a solder from the South. …show more content…
Since you have hope you expect something different to happen, but in the end the beginning happens anyways. In the story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” the read is expecting for the man to be hung. You think this because it tells us that he is looking down at the flowing water with a rope around his neck. The middle of the story starts to talk about how he is escaping. It gives you hope that he will get away and not be hung. He gets all of the way to his house gate and even starts to walk up to his wife. The reader is thinking that he made it home and escaped, but then it ends by him only dreaming and him being dead. In the story “The Story of an Hour,” the reader is first told than Mrs. Mallard has a heart disease. Then they tell you that he husband is dead and that they have to break the news to her easily so that she doesn’t have a heart attack and die. Once they tell her the news and she goes to her bedroom, the reader is thinking that she will die. She calms down and starts to think about all of the good that this may bring. The reader then feels hope that everything will be okay and she will not die. In the end she comes out of her room and then someone walks in the door, it was her husband. She was so excited that her heart disease killed her. In both stories the authors start out by making the reader think for the worst to happen. The authors then give the reader hope that everything will be okay and that they won’t die. In the end the author takes away all of that hope that the reader had. The author does this by the people in the stories dying anyways. I feel that by the authors doing this it keeps the reader interested. The reader thinks that they already know what will happen and then something completely changes and the reader is given hope in the situation. In the end the author takes away all hope by moving the situation back to what the beginning of the