The Omniscient Narrator

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bride” leaves the reader taken aback towards the end of the piece as it proclaims that Farquhar perished from the hanging and the acts of the entire third part can be considered void.
In class today we spent a large amount of time trying to deduce whether the events of the third part actually occurred inside the mind of Farquhar or whether the narrator simply conjured the thoughts out of thin air. This controversy provides an interesting example of the idea of the power that the narrator wields. Considering the narrator as omniscient, we can accurately believe that the narrator transcribed the thoughts as accurately as Farquhar himself imagined them to occur. These final, last minute, life-flashing before your eyes moments would then have existed inside the mind of Farquhar after all. Perhaps though, none of these events actually occurred and the author merely relayed a lie to us. Then we can assume that the narrator knows nothing about the true feelings of Farquhar and merely observes the actions of a doomed man.
Ultimately, the power does not lie in the hands of the narrator to relay the story to us. The act of interpretation comes down to the individual readers themselves. These readers are able to take either stance of the narrator and formulate their own feelings into the work. The beauty of literature can be seen in these individual responses to the work.
Personally, I believe it matters very little whether or not the events of the third part actually occurred inside the brain of Farquhar or not. Ultimately, the story comes down to the emotional connection between the audience and the idea of sympathy towards this civilian. If a Union soldier, acting as the narrator for the story, simply fabricated everything that Farquhar thought and the few lines of dialogue he had, the story still exists as a tremendous observation of the power of human sympathy. By avoiding the concept of Farquhar as a slaveowner and avoiding the harsh realities of what that consisted of, readers are more inclined to rally around Farquhar. Meanwhile, if the narrator spent the flashback brutally describing the ways Farquhar may have punished one of his slaves, the readers may not be as inclined to sympathize with his plight.