Tuesday, January 27, 2015

How could I fall for that?

            As soon as the truth is revealed it seems like it was obvious in retrospect. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce lead me right along seemingly offering no clues that it was lying and then pulled the rug right out from under me and leaves me feeling frustrated and stupid. It is a very specific feeling of frustration because I felt as if I could have avoided it all together, which is why I feel stupid as well. Every detail that could have tipped me off to the falsehood of the story stands out glaringly once the truth is explicitly stated.
            In the beginning of chapter three when Bierce writes “As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was as one already dead.” Here Bierce is explicitly telling us that Farquhar is dead. He then misleads us into falsehood by telling us the “doomed man,” as he is called early in the story, awakens from the darkness. The author then tells the tale of Farquhar escape to safety and along the way, I blindly accepted numerous potentially false details. For example, I accepted Bierce’s description of dying, even though he obviously has never died before.

            Why did I take it for granted that the author knows what death is like and can accurately describe it? I innately trust people who appear official, and the author of a published short story being given to us in a college-level English class certainly appears trustworthy. Bierce played with my trust and covertly pushed the boundaries of what I would believe, and I never questioned him once. I blindly followed him to the end when he turns the story on its head and leaves me feeling blindsided. It all seemed so obvious after the fact though, which is why it was so frustrating.

2 comments:

  1. I completely agree with you on how the narrator's manner and confidence when describing death was what lured me in. Granted, we can't know if that's what death is actually like, and I'm not sure if we as people will ever be told, or will be able to tell to others, what it's like. However, the extreme and vivid details that were thrown at us made me feel like I had a close idea of what it felt like.

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  2. I also followed the narrator blindly and at the end felt a little stupid I hadn't called it earlier. I've realized that reading involves a huge amount of trust in the writer because what else do we have to go on other than the words on the paper? We have no other choice. Though we can certainly question and speculate the only real information we have is given by the writer/narrator. The moment we start reading we are put in a state of vulnerability, fully relying on the text. Ambrose Bierce just exploited our unsubstantiated trust.

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