An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

In An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Ambrose Bierce tells a three part story about Peyton Farquhar, who was to be hung under Owl Creek bridge. The story starts out fairly straight-forward. In part I, the reader am immersed in imagery. Peyton Farquhar is identified beyond his physical appearance and pressing circumstance, that being his engagement with a noose above a river. Right before his demise, the reader is taken to part II, which gives the man’s name and assumed reason for his hanging. The third and final part of the story tells Peyton Farquhar’s wishful romance of escape. However, when he is finally reunited with his wife, the story is jolted back to reality; and with the final line “Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge” it is made quite clear that his flight was mere fantasy.
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In Part I of Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce, the point of view is, for the most part, third person objective. The reader is given a simple account of the setting and character description. The reader is informed that the story takes place “upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama”. A man, who goes unnamed until the second Part, awaits his hanging. He is described to be a planter of good features. With the amount of meticulous detail included in Part I, the reader is pulled into Bierce’s world. This works efficiently as an introduction to the rest of the story because one is absorbed into the writing before the plot progresses.
With each Part, the story grows more limited in its perspective. In Part II, the reader is given some background. The man at the noose is named as Peyton Farquhar. He is described as being a slave owner from a “highly respected Alabama family” and an avid Southern advocate. Unfortunately, this leads him to his death. He, under a tip from a Federal scout disguised as a Confederate soldier, tries to get driftwood from a bridge that was under Yank supervision with the promise of hanging for anyone who interfered. This is assumed to be his reason for being put to the noose. With Part II, the reader feels more sentimentally drawn to Peyton Farquhar, who he or she now knows more about.
Part III is, until the very last sentence, a climatic account of Peyton Farquhar’s escape. He falls into the river after the noose snaps; and after struggling to get off the rope around his limbs, he avoids gunfire, finds his way home, and is reunited with his wife. His brushes with death were so frequent and his narrow successes so prominent that Part III becomes something like the American folk hero, someone who always gets into and out of death defying situations unscathed. At this point, the reader is supposed to feel somewhat of a sentimental bond with Peyton Farquhar, who is at the last line revealed to have been fantasizing his flight and actually killed at the noose.