Hey, aren't you probably gonna have a reading assignment due tomorrow?
If that's not as inconvenient to you as it sounds to me, I should point out that I also have to go in to my part-time job tonight. Needless to say, I jumped on to my computer and tried to find out what our readings would be. Fortunately for me, at least one of the readings was able to be found online (which is fortunate because I'm poor, so I'm waiting on our refund checks from the school so I can buy the books required in my classes), and it was "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce.
I'd never read Bierce's writings before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. But naturally, I didn't have much of a choice, so I mindlessly threw his name and the title into my Google search bar and out came this link:
http://fiction.eserver.org/short/occurrence_at_owl_creek.html
So I click on the link and begin reading it on my Galaxy Tab, and at first I'm a little confused as to what's going on, but eventually I get the general setting. A man is being hung, and there's a group of soldiers playing executioner today (this is of course a very generalized version), and the hanging is just about to begin. Before the hanging is done however, we are introduced to the star of the show, one Mr. Peyton Farquhar, an unassuming planter, who begins thinking of an escape route.
I'm not gonna explain the whole story, and what parts I do explain I won't go into detail (since I put the link right there if you're really interested in the story), but I think I'll go ahead and spoil the ending for you, reader. We follow his escape, and his long, tiring journey back home, and he sees his beautiful wife, then he "feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck," which is how it transitions to telling us that he died, and none of this actually happened...
After I read this, I went ahead and looked up more info on the book, slightly humored but also a bit angry. This story was published in 1890, which means that these sort of not-actually-happening stories have been going on for more than a century now at least. I was so happy for this little farmer guy for his triumph over the military and death itself, yet it actually was just him picturing what he wanted to happen before he croaked. A huge slap in the face, and writers have brought this sort of effect with them over the years (I can't remember many examples off the top of my head, but Futurama has used this in one of it's "Whatif machine" episodes), seeming like they just like to pick on their audience. Still though, the story was really cool, very descriptive, and I may actually look into more of Bierce's work in the future.
Well thanks for reading, and I hope you'll stay tuned to my next addition to American Lit: Kyle Style! Have a good rest of the day!
