Junior Year English Journal #12

Response to An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

After reading the story and watching the short film of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, I would definitely say that I feel Ambrose Bierce is very good at tugging at the different emotions and reactions of his readers. At times, I felt disbelief at what his main character, Peyton Farquhar, was doing, and at other times I almost felt a sense of happiness at the fact that a person was returning home to his family after a near death experience, and was going to appreciate his family more, even though he was a confederate, a dirty rebel. Of course, Bierce has to snatch that semi-sense of happiness away, with the excellent twist at the very end of the story. As for the French-directed movie, I felt without the help of the story, I would have been a little lost, but the French director's choice to keep the dialogue to a minimum kept me intrigued with the cinematography, wondering how they were going to portray each scene from the short story as they went along.