Both "The Moonlit Road" and "In a Grove" are murder mysteries that confront the reader with the question of truth in storytelling. The texts present the reader with several first person testimonies of a crime, or the witness' involvement in it,...

There are several examples of the way vision establishes elements of realism in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and “The Yellow Wallpaper.” There is a literal vision that pertains to the senses of readers, which is created through the use of...

One of the more impactful means by which the experience of war is recreated for a civilian audience is through the illustration of the human body, with lived experience and relevant literature illustrating war as an entity so powerful that it...

Violence as a spectacle to be viewed by others for entertainment is a part of human history that can be seen in various times and societies, whether it be the Roman gladiator games where people fought to the death or the less extreme violent...

In the middle of the Civil War in Alabama, Peyton Farquhar, a wealthy farmer, awaits death upon Owl Creek Bridge. With a noose around his neck, Union soldiers watch as the gentleman collects his thoughts in his last moments before he is hanged for...

Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” tells the tale of a Southern farmer who has been sentenced to execution by hanging after being set up by a scout from the North. The story follows his train of thought as he tries to come to...

Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890) suggests a thought-provoking view on reality. Within Bierce’s work, we learn that a Confederate man, Peyton Farquhar, is to be hanged for actions against the Union Army. When Farquhar is...

Ambrose Bierce’s “The Coup de Grâce” is a work of Civil War fiction that, along with his other short stories on war, thematically opposes those texts of his time whose patriotism seemed “aimed at popularizing the “martial spirit” of the age”...

A carefully chosen title of a literary work can go a long way in selling that work to the common reader. Ambrose Bierce's well-thought-out title reveals little, yet just enough to gain our attention and to have us dwelling on the meaning of the...