dark style to interest his readers. In The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Peyton Farquar, a southern farmer, is duped by a northern spy, dressed as a southern militia man, to burn a bridge that would help the south. As he is doing this he is caught by the northern troops and they prepare him to be hanged. As the rope drops he feels the rope break and he falls into the water swimming away with bullets flying through the water (Bierce 81-85). After he escapes the northern troops, Farquar reaches land and goes back toward his home. During this walk back he feels the previous imprint of the rope, causing him to feel like he is suffocating. This whole time he feels as if he has an incredible sense of awareness of his surroundings. When he arrives at his house his wife and family are there to meet him, yet just before he reaches his wife everything goes dark because; his neck is broken from being hanged. His adventure of escaping was just a dream; in reality he is dead (Bierce 86-87). Many critics agree that this story could be Bierce’s death wish to end his miserable life. He had an uncompromising negative view of life, and believed that every man was sentenced to death. Life was only a temporary reprieve before the sentence was carried out. This pessimistic view of life is seen in most of his stories including one of his lesser-known works called A Watcher by the Dead. In this story he used death as the focal point for the plot of the story (Folsom 967-968). A Watcher by the Dead begins with three doctors discussing fear and how it manifests in humans. To test fear, one doctor proposes that they make a bet with someone to test their fear of death. The terms of the bet were simple: The man had to stay in an abandoned house with a dead body for one night with only one candle to be the light. He would win the bet if he did not go mad by morning. The man accepted the bet and that night they prepared the house. In the ...
