back to his house and wife. There is huge situational irony in believing that Faquhar is actually escaping rather than imagining all of his escape in the time it takes for rope to snap tight.

The story does contain a brief moment of dramatic irony in section two. Farquhar and his wife believe that the soldier is a Confederate like them; however, readers are told that the man is actually a Federal scout:

The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.

The reader now knows more about a particular situation than characters in the story, and we know that Farquhar was deviously set up.

Some further examples of irony in Ambrose Bierce's story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" are the following:

It is ironic that Peyton Farquhar is being hanged for a crime he did not succeed in committing. He is being hanged from the bridge he intended to burn down.

It is bitterly ironic that he imagines he is escaping and goes through a whole series of hopes and fears but ends up having his neck broken by the hanging rope just when he thinks he has reached the safety of his home.

It is ironic the way Ambrose Bierce leads the reader to believe that the "gray-clad soldier" who stops at Farquhar's plantation and tells him how easy it would be to burn down the bridge turns out to be an enemy soldier. The very last words of the second section are: "He was a Federal scout."

It is ironic that Farquhar should imagine that he is living for a long period of time while falling with the noose around his neck, when he only has a matter of seconds to live. The length of his life was measured by the amount of slack in the rope.

A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees.

There are many different views of what constitutes irony. Typically irony seems like something that would be a joke if it were not so painful or tragic. Ambrose Bierce had a sour, sardonic, pessimistic, cynical nature, as is shown in the grim humor of the definitions in his book The Devil's Dictionary. He savored irony.

The irony in this short story lies in the presentation of thje character of Peyton Farquhar in the second section of this story. There is a deliberate discrepancy between Farquhar's notions of what war is all about the messy, brutal reality of war. Note how Farquhar is presented in this section after the reader has been told how he was unable to become a soldier in one conflict:

...he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction.

The narrator goes on to express that Farquhar agreed on the whole with the "frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war." Clearly Bierce is creating a character who has romantic notions concerning war that bear no resemblance to the reality of what war is all about. He easily swallows the idea that such an important bridge would lie unguarded and could easily be burnt down, and even when he is on the point of being hung, his desperate desire to be a hero causes him to imagine a daredevil escape rather than the ignomonious reality of his death. The irony in this story thus lies in the discrepancy between the reality of what war really is and Farquhar's romantic notions of war as an "opportunity for distinction" and "the larger life of the soldier." All is not fair in love and war, and this is a truth that Farquhar ironically evades until his very end.

Irony occurs when events unfold that are the opposite of what the reader is led to expect. In part 2, the chief irony is that the man in the gray coat who comes and asks for water is not a Confederate. Though the narrator never identifies him as a Confederate, Peyton Farquhar and his wife believe he is, and the reader goes along with their assumption. The Confederates wore gray, rather than dark blue like the North, and the man acts like a Confederate, thanking the wife "ceremoniously" for the water and "bowing" to the husband as if he is a Southern gentleman. Ironically, however, we find out that "he was a Federal scout." His goal is to lure Farquhar into trying to burn down the bridge so he can be arrested—and Farquhar falls into the trap. A further irony is that Farquhar has

without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.

Ironically, he is the one who falls victim to the credo that "all is fair in love and war."

The ironic incident in part 3 is that that while we are privy to a long sequence in which Farquhar is described escaping from the hanging and returning safely home to his wife, the second we believe he has fallen into his wife's arms, he dies from being hanged. The whole sequence is the fantasy of a dying man in the instant between the choking sensation of the noose tightening and the moment of death.

The irony of the story is that the reader thinks that Peyton Farquhar has escaped hanging and is trying to get back home. However, at the end of the story, we find that Peyton has been imagining his escape during the time when

"the sergeant stepped aside"

to the last line of the story which reads,

"Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge."

The only epiphany comes for the reader because Peyton, unfortunately is dead. We realize that there were clues throughout the story that told us Peyton was really dying. For instance, when the constant references to how difficult it was to breathe and the fact that from the river, Peyton could,

"saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf--he saw the very insects upon them. . ."

His eyesight is too keen for a man swimming in a river to see such details. He sees that the sharpshooter firing at him " has grey eyes" Finally, as he gets closer "to home", 

"His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen . . .he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!"

Thus, the reader suddenly discovers that Bierce has been indicating all along that Peyton is dying, and yet, the reader's hope has sustained him with the belief that Peyton just might free himself. 

In some ways, Peyton Farquhar seems to represent an everyman character type as he lives his final moments, and in this sense the story can be seen as allegorical. Time seems to slow down for him. He listens to the ticking of his watch as

The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness.

His mind is going so fast, moving through perceptions—and later, imagined perceptions—so quickly that the ticking of the second hand on his watch seems to move interminably slowly. He feels himself awaken, after he has fallen through the bridge "ages later, it seemed to him," and it turns out that, as he falls, he imagines his own escape. In this fantasy, he hits the water, swims away while dodging bullets and travels through the woods with "preternaturally keen and alert" senses. He tried to fix his mind on thoughts of his wife and children right before he fell, and this is where his mind returns now. He sees his wife, the thing most important to him in the world. It's a human story of a man facing his own death, and it reveals the lengths that one's mind goes to in order to protect one from the terrible truth. You may have heard that one's life flashes before one's eyes right before one dies, but this story seems to convey the idea that one sees what actually matters most, and that is the experience of living.

A literary epiphany is typically the province of a character in the story. He or she must have some realization or new awareness after which he or she sees events in a new light. Near the end of Part III, as Farquhar is about to clasp his wife (in his imagination),

he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon—then all is darkness and silence!

This would be the moment when the noose actually tightens fully around his neck, snapping it and killing him. Because he is experiencing time so slowly at this point, we might imagine that he has a moment for an epiphany as the noose tightens and breaks his neck, before he goes brain dead. If he does have one, this epiphany is not narrated, but as the narration follows his thoughts closely until he is actually pronounced dead, we could infer that he realizes what has happened: that the rope did not break and has only just now pulled taut.

In terms of dramatic irony, Farquhar's "preternatural" senses must alert us in Part III that something is not quite right. From his position in the river

He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf—he saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies' wings, the strokes of the water spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their boat—all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.

Farquhar is sort of amazed by what he sees, not appearing to realize that he ought not to be able to perceive such details from far away in the middle of the river (or even at all). Certainly, descriptions like these should raise red flags for us that things are not as they seem. Farquhar may believe that he is alive and having these experiences, but they do not have the ring of truth for readers.

DRAMATICIRONY.  There are several examples. Peyton Farquar dreams of greater glory on the battlefield, rather than from the more "humble" duty of spying for the Confederacy. Farquar is deceived by the Southern soldier who is actually a Union spy. He is hung from the same bridge he is trying to burn.

EPIPHANY. (Definition from thefreedictionary.com: "A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization.") It is the reader who actually experiences the epiphany in this story, since we are led to believe that Peyton Farquar has survived his hanging, only to find out in the superbly crafted surprise ending that he is actually dead.

ALLEGORY.  (Definition: "The representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form.")  The story represents an allegorical form of writing, particularly in Farquar's final thoughts--the noose breaking, his escape, his return home--that are presented as reality.

Ambrose Bierce's Civil War stories are well known for their shocking endings, and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" provides such an ending. His characterization techniques vary according to the story but, on the whole, he applies the three most common types of characterization—(a) description and action, with authorial commentary; (b) action alone, with no authorial commentary on the action; and (c) through depiction of a character's inner self through the thoughts and feelings the character expresses. Of the three, Bierce focuses on developing his character through the man's inner self.

When we first encounter Farquhar, he is introduced only as "a man" who is standing on some planks, with his hands behind his back and a rope around his neck, about to be hanged by some Federal troops who are themselves only characterized by their actions in connection with the hanging. In a brutal war, these men are silent and stone faced because death is both common and expected.

Bierce first characterizes Farquhar—still referred to a "the man"—with his observable characteristics:

He was a civilian, if one might judge by his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good...his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp.

Bierce's observation of the man's "kindly expression" is a subtle, but important, observation that immediately creates some sympathy for the as-yet unnamed victim of war.

The characterization moves from the outside world to within the character when Bierce notes that the man "closed his eyes in order to fix his last thought upon his wife and children," another slice of this man's life that creates sympathy in the reader. From this point to the end, Bierce includes Farquhar's interior life in the characterization—we know how and what Farquhar feels and sees because we see the action through his eyes and are privy to his interpretation of events.

Perhaps the most effective and startling use of Farquhar's inner self is, appropriately, at the end when Farquhar's brain, starved of oxygen because of the hanging, is still sending signals to his consciousness:

His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them; his tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from beneath his teeth into the cold air...he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet.

In Farquhar's last moment of consciousness, he is sensing the consequences of the hanging—protruding eyes; tongue protruding from the mouth; no roadway to be felt. Bierce's choice to maintain Farquhar's inner dialogue is a masterful touch of irony. Rather than simply describing Farquhar's physical being at the point of death, Bierce has made us feel, as if we are inhabiting Farquhar's body, his last sensations.