Transition from and Difference between Truths and Lies

Reading through this week's posts, I noticed many of you have focused your reactions on the twist ending or some detail/symbol of Bierce's short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." Although I think these points are interesting and something to consider when reflecting on the text, my main concern with this story is the big picture. I look to answer the following questions: What is the purpose of this story? What is it telling us about life?

As I fumble through the pages again and again, I notice how difficult Bierce makes it difficult for the reader to distinguish between the "truth" and the "lies." The first thing that I notice is that the story is purposely constructed in three parts. Part I offers many details of the scene where Peyton Farquhar is about to be hung. As far as I can tell, all the descriptions of this part are truthful. The narrator even leaves concrete clues to Farquhar's fate by describing the farmer as a "doomed" man.

It is not until Part II that the narrator introduces some sort of deceit; the obvious and large lie of Part II is that the visiting "Confederate" solider is actually from the Union. However, there was a more important lie in my mind; the solider fibbed to Farquhar saying that "a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier... is now dry and would burn like tinder." This lie is especially significant because it directly connects to a truth in Part I, where a piece of driftwood flowed down the stream (obviously wet). This solider's lie encouraged Farquhar to go to Owl Creek and set the existing "dry wood" on fire in hopes to kill the Union soldiers. In all, the intermittent lies introduced in the mostly truthful Part II helped the story transition from completely truthful (Part I) to the completely deceitful (Part III).

If Part III ended with it's first line, the story would have remained truthful: "As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was one already dead." Yet, the story trudges on with the elaborate and exciting tale of Farquhar's false escape. These three parts in the story complete the cycle from truth to lie: from Part I (truth) to Part II (truth and lies) to Part III (lies).

From this distinction, I analyzed and compared the details from Part I and Part III. Although Part I is a truth and Part III is a lie, the details in each section are very similarly described. Bierce walks a fine line between the truths and the lies, which is what makes his story so hard to distinguish the differences. As Janelle mentioned in class, detail is a difficult concept in terms of truths and lies. An author needs detail need to convince the reader that an event actually happened; however, too much detail seems suspicious to the reader. We come across this idea in this story.

My large takeaway:

The transition from and difference between the truths and the lies are very subtle in this story; what are truths and what are lies does not matter, rather the journey that the author takes reader through.

P.S.

Fun fact I found while researching Peyton Farquhar's name!

Peyton means "from the fighter's farm" and Farquhar means "beloved man."