Short Story Analysis Argumentative Essay Example

from diverse perspectives.

On the one hand, he is a devoted patriot, led by his ambition to defend the country as he understands it and willing to risk his life to subvert the Yankees’ military advances. At the same time, standing on the Owl Creek bridge, he is seized by the natural human instinct for survival and seems undisturbed by patriotic ideals, although the story never mentions his regret over his actions. In this way, he is depicted as a combination of elevated, deeply human traits and atavistic, animal longing for life exemplified in his desperate struggle. Farquhar is the central character; all the rest, including his wife, the Federal scout, and the firing squad seem in comparison to him elements of the setting, creating background for Farquhar’s feelings and ideas.

Farquhar is part of the conflict that tears apart his external environment – the nation submerged in the Civil War. Being a devoted Southerner, he is forced to look on the ongoing military events as his own cause, which motivates him to undertake his attack. Although the story focuses on Farquhar’s instinctive urges rather than social causes of his deed, it nevertheless provides some cultural and historic context in which the audience can place and evaluate Farquhar’s actions. Thus, he is viewed with deference by soldiers to whom “death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him” (Kennedy, Gioia 2005:503). The cultural concepts and understanding emerge in the interpretation of Farquhar’s appearance that, given his habit “of a planter” he was “no vulgar assassin” (Kennedy, Gioia 2005:503).

The most interesting feature

of the story is perhaps its treatment of time. Although in fact the events evolve in a very short time span, except for the flashback to the time when Farquhar makes his fatal decision to disrupt the movement of the Union Army, the actions that flash in the character’s mind would in reality occupy at least a day. Farquhar’s fall into the river, his swimming along in order to escape the fire of the soldiers, landing on the shore of the creek, the night in the forest, meeting his wife and children at sunlight – all this is suppressed into few brief seconds in which the character struggles for his life on the rope. The conflict between the long story and the short time, abundance of detail for the imaginary action, the interesting exploration of the relationship between the conscious and the subconscious makes Bierce’s narrative a thought-provoking and impressive work of short fiction.