occurence at owl creek bridge
...). Farquhar is very zealous and determined. Farquhar is more of a dynamic character because he does undergo permanent change in the end of the story when he dies. The zeal of Farquhar is seen in his devotion to his family and to the Union. When Farquhar is standing on the end of the plank about to die, “he closes his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children” (274). This is symbolic, and shows Farquhar is a caring father and husband. Upon arrival to his house he stands there for a second and stares at the beautiful morning sunshine and the wide white walk. Nothing is dark; everything is a light color. This is a metaphor which means that Farquhar is not thinking about the bad or death, he is simply thinking about the good and the glory of life. The narrator reveals, “at the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended arms” (279). Farquhar cares very much for his family and never wants to be separated from them. This shows that Farquhar has a caring side and that he is not self- centered. Farquhar is also very loyal to the Union when he tries to destroy Owl Creek Bridge, so that the Federal army could not cross. Farquhar disobeys the sign that states, “Any civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels or trains will be summarily hanged” (275). He disobeys this order and Peyton Farquhar is caught by the Federal army and sentenced to be hanged. This shows the devotion he has to the Union army. Besides being zealous Farquhar is determined to live. Farquhar does not want to give up on life and the narrator asserts, “As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge, he lost consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was awakened—ages later, it seemed to him—by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation” (275). This shows the anguish Farquhar has for life and his family. When the Yankees started firing at Farquhar, while he was escaping in the water, he dodged every bullet they shot at him. Farquhar’s dream is very intense and shows how much he really appreciates life. The imagery is visual and auditory. The visual imagery includes the creek, the bugs, and the other creatures Farquhar sees while both standing on the plank and when he is “escaping” from the Federal army. Farquhar sees objects that most people would not notice when they are about to die. An example is, “a piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a sluggish stream” (274). This shows that Farquhar is not keeping his thoughts on what is about to happen, and instead keeps his thoughts on objects such as those that catch his eyes. When Farquhar pops his head out of the water, “He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf—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” (276). These are items that are almost impossible to see from up close, and Farquhar sees them from a distance away. This could show that people in near death experiences have more respect for the nature around them than a person who is just walking and not noticing the glory of the things in the proximity of them. Another example of imagery that is visual is his observation of the marksman’s eye “that it was a gray eye and remembered having read that gray eyes were the keenest, and all famous marksmen had them” (276). Farquhar is referring to the soldier’s eye that is shooting at him. He is, again seeing things that most normal people would not see if they are in a life or death situation. Farquhar recounts, “Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color—that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick” (278). When Farquhar is caught in this whirlpool, he sees nothing but colors and can not see or describe the objects around him. When Peyton Farquhar finally reaches the beach, he illustrates the sand as, “looking like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble” (278). Farquhar has reached the beach and is overwhelmed by the sand. Even though the sand is ordinary, Farquhar finds it to be beautiful because he has just escaped a near death experience and is in a great state of happiness. The imagery is also auditory. Once again Peyton Farquhar hears sounds that he would not usually hear under normal circumstances. The first real instance is his hearing the ticking of his watch as he waits to die. He describes the sound of the watch increasing in strength and is very irritated by this. The watch symbolizes the time that Peyton Farquhar has to live. At first, when he bursts out of the water, he hears “the humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragonflies’ wings, the strokes of the water-spiders’ legs, like oars which had lifted their boat—all these made audible music” (276). These different insects show that Farquhar is paying close attention to the sounds of nature and is not taking life for granted. The next example comes from the shots of the soldiers when Farquha...