Review: Narration & Description, and the Writing Process - Essay Example

Narration & and the Writing Process Lecturer This paper seeks to detail a response to “An Occurrence at Owl Creek” by Ambrose Bierce. I so doing, the paper will address the function of “time” in the essay and mention the metaphors and themes inherent in the piece. The paper will also contain quotes to illustrate how time works in the essay by Bierce. The function of time is shown by the theme of fluid nature of time. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is a devised commentary on the fluid nature of time.

The structure of the story moves from the present to the past and to what is referred to as the imagined present. This reflects this fluidity and the tension existing among competing time notions. The second part disrupts what initially appears to be a continuous flow of the implementation taking place in the present moment. Farquhar closes his eyes at the end of the bridge, “A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The mans hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord”.

This was a signal of his slipping into his own reality version, this was not burdened by any accountability to laws of time. Farquhar drifts into a timeless realm as more time elapses and the ticking of his watch slows between the strokes. Bierce compares Farquhar to a “vast pendulum,” immaterial and spinning wildly out of control, when he imagines himself sliding into the water. “The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless”. In this particular moment, Farquhar glides into a transitional space that is not life or death but an incorporeal realization in a world with its own rules.

The age of Farquhar is also a sense of function of time, “The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age”. Summarily, time alters and slows in order to accommodate a safe return vision of Farquhar to his family in the window of time between Farquhar’s actual death and officer stepping off the plank. Farquhar cannot escape reality in spite of his manipulation of time. Death ultimately claims Farquhar even if he lives a few days or moments longer. His attempts to bend time for his own benefit are for zilch.

A remarkable aspect of Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is his realistic rendering of alternate conception of time to Farquhar suggesting that the nature of time is subjective to some extent. The piece of writing has shown the usage of other various themes and metaphors. The color gray is dominant throughout the story. This shows the vague lines that divide friends from foes and the clouded reality sense at the end of the story. Gray color also indicates the Confederacy, the cause of Farquhar sacrificing himself foolishly.

Gray color also shows a distortion of truth, the soldier who was a scout from the north disguised himself into a Confederate soldier. Gray is also the color of Farquhar’s eyes and sentinel at the bridge. Driftwood is another metaphor representing Farquhar himself and his unattainable freedom as he imagines his escape in the water. Driftwood first interrupts him from thinking about his children and wife. He later imagines floating in the water as if he was driftwood. The Owl Creek Bridge itself symbolizes a connection and transition sympathizers and forces of confederation destroyed presumably the bridge in their attempts to deter the North from advancing to the territory of their enemy.

ReferencesAmbrose Bierce. (2004). An Occurrence At Owl Bridge. http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Ambrose_Bierce/An_Occurrence_At_Owl_Creek_Bridge/index.html