In class today I found the conversation to be enthralling and fairly heated. There are so many things one could discuss in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. I found it particularly interesting when we were discussing what was a lie and whether it actually matters. The narrator steers this story and chooses what to portray to the readers, much like a newspaper journalist trying to have an article published. There are lies everywhere, which we are blissfully unaware of. However, especially after hearing the slight truth in everyone’s lies yesterday, there is some truth to most things if one looks deep enough. In the last line of the first part, we see the narrator’s control because Peyton Farquhar’s thoughts “were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it.” This should make the reader suspicious because there is no guarantee that Farquhar’s thoughts are his own. But it does not because we tend to skip over the details and when we are in for a story, even if it is a work of non-fiction in our daily paper, we believe every word because we want a story and want to trust the written word. This idea also made me think about not only about the truth and lies in writing but in photography as well. I’m an art major with a photo focus, so this is something that has recently come into my head since a photo out of context can easily be manipulated, just like a narrator can manipulate the unsuspected reader; but really reading any story takes the reader out of reality so they are just being set up to be manipulated.
We discussed in class that there is a thin line between what is real and what is imaginary. The third part of this story takes place in Farquhar’s head and we debated whether or not it was real. The reader was tricked into believing that the story was real and that Farquhar managed to escape from the Union Army. We debated about whether what happened was purely in his head or was just a projection of the narrator. Even if it was in his head, in my opinion it does not make the story any less real. In Farquhar’s mind he could see the intense details of the trees and the leaves, and even see the color of the general’s eyes.
In response to your last sentence, how do we know that Farquhar actually could see, or thought he could see, the details of the leaves and the general's eyes? Isn't it possible that the narrator lied to us and fed us those details in order to convince us that Farquhar was still alive and had successfully escaped? I'm pretty sure we talked about this in class, and I'm only bringing it up to play devil's advocate. I actually agree with you that it does not matter how much of the story is "real" or a "lie." Either way, it is a work of fiction, so (theoretically) none of it is really true at all. It accomplished the purpose of a story, which is to engage the reader in another world in a way that makes the reader think. Given how much thought we as a class have spent on "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", I would say that Bierce did his job as an author, and the narrator did his (hers, its) job as a storyteller.
ReplyDeleteSo I heard a discussion on NPR the other day about how much journalism has changed since the advent of the internet... and, in particular, the explosion of news outlets and the ability of the "subscriber" to pick and choose his/her "playlists." As a result, said the radio guest, journalists are less about projecting the objective story than making sure that they are pandering to a particular audience (e.g. Fox News vs. the BBC). Interesting and apropos given your post above!
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