Thursday, March 8, 2012

What do you think the narrator looks like in "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"?

Actually, there is no identified narrator in this story,
so it would not be possible to describe one. A story with an identified narrator is
written in the first-person point of view; a narrator tells the story as he or she
observed or experienced it from a personal point of view. Sometimes the narrator has a
name, sometimes not, but the narrator will have an identity, and his or her identity
will influence how the story was experienced and then
related.


"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is written in
the third-person point of view. The voice telling the story is not a character with an
identity; it is the creative voice of the author telling the story. Sometimes a
third-person point of view is limited; the author will limit the details of the story to
include only what an observer at the scene would see or hear. Sometimes a third-person
point of view is omniscient; the author acts as "all-seeing," and includes not only what
could be seen and heard, but also what one or more of the characters is thinking and
feeling.


In "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," Bierce
writes from both the limited and the omniscient third-person point of view, moving from
one to the other in different parts of the story. For instance, most of part III of the
story is written in the third-person omniscient point of view as Bierce takes the reader
into Peyton's mind, but the conclusion of the story returns to the third-person limited
point of view.

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