Is the truth in the iceberg?

In An Occurance at the Owl Creek Bridge, Bierce makes up, the reader, speculate, can one person be drowned in their deepest desires that it becomes reality and the actual reality is meaningless.

The story begins with the scene of capital punishment of a man. As the minutes of life slipped ever so quickly, every sound, movement, and physical being distracted him to the point where he could scream. Since the idea of death led to more torture, impatience, and anxiety, only the desires by his mind could soothe him. His last thought of his family ignites a deeper desire by his consciousness, to escape. He starts to think if he could unbind himself, dodge bullets, or the noose snapped he could return to his family. This leads to the final scene of his imaginative great escape and his adventurous escape to his family. This is his truth. His last conscious thoughts was the adventurous escape and to him that was reality . In this microcosm of his mind the grim reaper never caught him.

All of the factors that led up to the actual reality of this man seems meaningless to his consciousness. For example, the once rebellious confederate cavalryman who required assistance in the quenching of this thirst, was never perceived as a Federal Scout by the planter's family. The fact that the Federal Scout spied on him which led to his tragic demise seems meaningless to his reality. Participating in rebellious acts that led to treason does not seem to conflict with his consciousness. The acts of actual reality never existed in his reality which just made it all false. His imaginative mind draws a line between truth and lie. The truth exists in his deepest desires by his mind's microcosm. The lie exists in the macrocosm of actual reality.

Bierce does a vivid portrayal of the fact, that if a person immerses themselves into a fantasy to the point where it becomes reality and fantasy become the truth.

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Spoiler Alert!!!! Don't read this if you haven't read the story.

In An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge, Bierce shows us, the reader, that the truth is entirely subjective.

The biggest example of this is, of course, the entire last part of the story. Mr. Farquhar imagines his own great escape and his triumphant return to his home and to his family in the mere milli-seconds before his death, or maybe even in the actual throes of his death. To him that was his truth. His last conscious thoughts were of this escape and to him it was all real and was all happening. In his subjective truth, he never died. To the military officers on the bridge and to the platoon watching from the hillside below all that happened was a rebel, caught in treason, was hung for his crime.

There are other smaller examples of this in the story. The one that most caught my attention was the grey-clad rebel turned federal scout. This young man, seemingly a confederate cavalryman, road up to the Farquhar plantation and asked for water to quench his thirst. He chatted with the unsuspicious Mr. Farquhar, drank some water and rode away. To the Farquhars he would always be just a simple confederate soldier who stopped by for a bit of refreshment.
However, as we come to find out, this soldier is actually a Federal Scout. A yankee spy riding through enemy territory, most likely to survey the resources and the resistance his commanders were likely to encounter once they had begun their advance. This young man, although unlikely to be implicated, actually caused Mr. Farquhar's undignified and untimely demise.
The soldiers truth, and the Farquhars' truth are completly different and totally subject to assumptions. The planters assumed that a grey-clad horseman was 'on their side', and thus created their own truth.

Bierce seems to very acurately represent that one man's truth is another man's lie.

When the bad guys are good, and the good guys are bad

In the short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, the reader is forced to ask if there really is a clearly drawn line between good and bad, and whether something "evil" can actually be good.

Instead of the obvious, I, going to write about how sometimes what is known to be evil, can be good, and how the truth gets a little grey. 

 The story starts off with a man about to be hung, and you immediately feel bad for him, especially since he apparently good guy, described as  having "a kindly expression... Evidently this was no vulgar assassin."(3) Also, the planter thinks about his family before he is about to die, which made me think of my father. Yet this man is later revealed to be a slave owner, who wants to keep slavery/succeed. All these facts make him evil, deserving the death. right? Except you can't help but think about how all he wants is to be with his family. Even though he is a slave owner, as I read I couldn't help but hope he made it out alive.  I actually found myself rooting against the soldiers, who were  the good guys. So even though the real twist was that the  escape was fake,  I ask a question about truth and lies in this piece of literature. Even when something is accepted as evil, can this known truth become blurred when the person is good? 

Is this the first student post?

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge crosses the line between truth and lies in literature because of its portrayal of time throughout the story.

So since I was talking down about this blog I decided I’d make an effort at using it and starting off a little bit ahead. I’m going to try to not give too much of the story away since I’m posting this kind of early, and I’m sure everyone still wants to read it. I wanted to explain that but I decided to put my thesis first since that’s what the professor asked. But back to the point….

I thoroughly enjoyed the story, the third person-narrative was perfect for the situation. Bierce would use words such as evidently while describing the scenario which made me feel like if I had been there, I obviously would have known all of this. Yet this novel crosses into a lie in the first part of the story. Bierce defies time by showing that the farmer had imagined his entire escape seconds before he died.

Since the professor wanted to teach a class about manipluation in literature, this story makes a great start to the year. I don’t want to say too much more past that. Enjoy reading it for yourselves.