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   bullgatortail Teacher
   High School - 12th Grade

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   Peyton Farquar, the main character of Ambrose Bierce's short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," is sentenced to be hanged on a railroad bridge in Alabama. Although the reader is led to believe that Farquar's noose has broken, and he has escaped his execution by falling in the river and swimming away, we find at the end that this is not true. In the end, we find that Farquar is dead, and hanging from a noose on the Owl Creek Bridge. Bierce used the "life flashing before his eyes" phrase in a most accurate manner, for in truth it was the last seconds of his life. In most cases of hanging, the victims do not die instantaneously--there are a few moments of life and lucidity before the strangulation is complete. Therefore, the entire scene that Farquar has imagined--from the rope breaking to the escape to his return home to his family--is simply the final moments of "life flashing before his eyes."

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   Posted by bullgatortail on Tuesday October 13, 2009 at 9:32 PM