An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce is the story of the hanging of a War-era Southern gentleman Civil by the name of Peyton Farquhar. The story begins with an unidentified man preparing to be hanged by a company of Union soldiers on a railroad bridge spanning a river. He is then identified as Peyton Farquhar, a man who attempted to destroy the same bridge they are on based on information given to him by a Federal scout posing as a Confederate soldier. As he is dropped from the bridge to be hanged, the rope breaks and he falls into the river. After freeing himself and returning to the surface of the river, he realizes that his senses are all very heightened and he has even “noticed the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops on a million blades of grass” (153). Peyton then begins swimming downstream while being shot at by soldiers and also by a cannon. Soon he pulls himself to the ground and begins the long journey home. After walking all day and night, to the point that "his tongue was swollen with thirst" and "he could no longer feel the road under his feet" he finally arrives home (155). Just as he is about to hug his wife he feels a sharp pain in his neck and hears a loud pop. He died by hanging and all this was just a dream. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” shows the potential strength that a person's will to live can have and that we often don't appreciate...