Even after I knew that this whole
class was about lies and was specifically told not to trust the narrator, I was
still shocked at the end of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”. Bierce leads
you to believe that Farquhar has made an amazing escape and has finally made it
home safe after his long journey. He gives you the happy ending you are hoping
for, which makes it so much more disappointing when it turns out a majority of
the story is a lie. This makes me think of the exercise we did in class. We
found ourselves hoping that one of the stories was true. Even though the
outcome doesn’t affect us, we still “root” for a certain thing to be true. In
this case it seems like there is no way Farquhar could ever live through this,
and when he escapes I felt myself immediately rooting for him because he was
the underdog. That is what made it so believable. I wanted so badly for him to
survive and for what the narrator was saying to be true, that it was easier to
believe it.
Another
thing was discussed in class was being mad when it was revealed that you had
been lied to. However, I didn’t feel that mad or betrayed at the end of this
story. One reason for that could be the fact that it was a short story. So I
didn’t have as much invested in the story and characters as I would have if it
had been a novel. After reading this short story I will be more wary of the
narrator and the truth when I’m doing future reading in this class.
I definitely agree that we as the readers really rooted for Peyton's survival. I think Bierce did a really good job of having the readers engaged in Peyton's journey by not only vividly describing his struggles but also including the fact that he was fooled by a Federal scout. I also thought of the activity from class and how we often believe in what we want to believe. Bierce was able to latch onto our attention and make us keep reading as well as convince us that Peyton had a chance. Not only were we fooled, Peyton was fooled as well. We rooted for Peyton as much as he rooted for the Union. In the end however, we were fooled by Bierce just as Peyton was fooled by the scout. Similarly, I was not very mad and it did not seem like Peyton was mad either. Rather than continuing to think about the lies, I think we tend to focus on what really matters in the end - the truth.
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