Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Can you see yourself walking in a thick forest with trees the size of houses surrounding you, but this is no normal stroll, this is a walk to your death. Uniformed officers are on either side of you. You are about to be hung for who knows what. The officers tie a rope around your neck and your hands. Then, the officer gives the command to remove the plank you’re standing on. Your neck feels extremely uncomfortable and then everything goes black. The story “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, by Ambrose Bierce, is a fiction that somewhat reminds me of the Twilight Zone.
There is one part of this story I can connect to Deep Water. While the main character is being hung, he slips out of the rope and falls down to the river below. Because there are ropes around his hands, he can’t swim and begins to drown. The way Ambrose describes it is almost like the way William O. Douglas. The main character describes a fading light up above. He feels kind of relaxed and dreamy as well. Then as soon as his hands break free, he’s able to swim. It’s kind of like when Will from Deep Water was drowning, he couldn’t move his arms or legs. He wanted to but he couldn’t. If I were Will, it probably would’ve felt like I was tied up. Maybe it would feel like was about to be executed and not able to move at all.
To me, executions can be rather gruesome in some ways. Dying on a cross is probably the worst. It’s so long and very painful. First, they drive nails through the person’s hands. Then, they raise the cross and stand it up. After that, person just hangs by their arms and struggles to breathe because they’re being stretched almost. Probably they want to die it’s so painful but they can’t. That is the worst execution to get. One of the quickest ways to die is to be shot. All that the executioner has to do is cock the gun and shoot. The goriest is stoning. What happens is the whole community comes and throws rocks at the criminal till he/she dies. One that requires the least bloodshed is a lethal injection. They put some kind of chemical in a syringe and inject you. I can connect the Crucifixion of Jesus to another part of this story. The main character in the story was outside and ran into what he thought was a Confederate scout. They talked and then the scout left. Later in the story we find out the scout is a Union spy. Then, the main character is caught and is sentenced to be hung. Jesus on the other hand was betrayed by Judas with a kiss. After that Jesus was escorted and sentenced to be hung on a cross. Both deaths are fairly similar except Jesus died in times when Romans ruled everything while the main character in O.O.C.B. died during the Civil War.
The Civil War was the worst conflict that happened in our nation’s history. It reminds me of what’s going on in the Middle East. They’re undergoing a time where there are issues with the government and anarchy is ruling. The issue in the Civil War was that slavery was abolished and people wanted it back. So that meant that the U.S. split in half and was made to different “regions”; the Confederates and the Union. In the end, slavery was abolished for good and the U.S. was back together again. Eventually, that is what will happen to the Middle East and peace will once again be restored there.
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is a story that has a little bit of everything in it. When you read it, there is so much information you can connect to. I bet if you read it, that you could write a five paragraph essay off it because there’s so much meat in it. Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is a story that you could make a book of topics about.
