An Occurrence at Owls Creek Bridge

The reader, though willing, also goes on with Farquhar's deception because of several factors. One is that the reader is prone to believing in happy endings and Farquhar's illusion provides that. Bierce once wrote, "bad readers -- readers who, lacking the habit of analysis, lack also the faculty of discrimination, and take whatever is put before them, with the broad, blind catholicity of a slop-fed conscience or a parlor pig" (Schulze). There are adequate clues throughout the story that hint to the reader that something is amiss. So the deception of the reader is, in essence, the reader's fault. The first hint that foreshadows deception is in the first part of the story.

"If I could but free my hands," he thought, "I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. (Bierce 72-73)

Farquhar completed those actions almost word for word in his false reality. Then there are other instances that should be taken into account by the reader such as the instance at the end where the illusion starts to fall apart. Farquhar seems to dream within his dream.

Second, the narrative structure Bierce uses makes the reader doubt whether the narrator is reliable. The story jumps from an objective to a subjective point of view. In the first part of the story, the narrator stays in third person objective. The narrator simply states how things are happening with no bias to either side in the story. The end of the first part of the story all the way through till near the end of the third part is where the narrator subtly changes to a subjective third person narrator. The reader gets a glimpse into the mind of Farquhar. As Habibi stated, "We are clued in to his preternaturally keen senses, incredible stamina, pain, and elation at having escaped a cruel death" (84). Then, quite abruptly, the reader is told the hard truth by a detached narrator: "Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek Bridge" (Bierce 75).

Bierce is a master at being able to control structure to make his protagonist an antihero. By using time, death, and deception to set up his character, he then lets their own flaws become the reason for their death. In "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," Bierce seems to purposely hang Farquhar for his misguided thoughts and actions.

...