Relating Owl Creek to Realism

There are many comparisons to the Realism period in the story "The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." First, the main character in the story is middle class. This is one characteristics of Realism because people of the middle class basically supplied the voice of the Realism period(Bierce). In the story, the reader will tend to notice that the main character is not rich but not very poor leaving him to be in the middle class. Another way that "The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" reflects the realism period is the way that the author makes the main character appear to the audience as a very likable man(Bierce). For example, in the story, the main character is from the North. When he goes to the South, he finds a war uniform of the Confederates and he tries to get members from the Confederate army to destroy a bridge that would really help the Union Army in the war against the Confederates(Bierce). He almost gets the Confederate men to do this by convincing them that the Union has built up a huge army that was going to attack the Confederate settlement by catching them off guard and using the bridge to get across the river. This is actually not true at all though. The main character is actually doing this because the Union army is actually very weak on the other side of the river and they could easily be taken control of on the other side of the river(Bierce). Because he is doing this, this makes the main character a very likable man within the story(Bierce). If people read this story during the war, there would have been many mixed opinions on this story because there would be people from the South who would think that the main character would be a bad man, but people from the North would think that he is a hero because in the story, he is fighting on the side of the Union(Bierce). Today, however, since the majority of people do not believe in slavery anymore and we have good morals when it comes to the abolishing of slavery, the audience sees this character as a very likable man, which is a characteristic of Realism. The last example that shows characteristics of Realism in the story "The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is the fact that the author uses lots ans lots of detail to describe the setting in which the story takes place. For example, in the story, the author describes the river, the bridge, and the forest with plenty of detail for the reader(Bierce). For example, when describing the bridge and the creek, the author describes the water within the creek as well as the dimensions of the creek as well. The author then goes on to describe the bridge by telling the reader or the audience what kind of shape the bridge is in, how big the bridge appears and also most importantly the author describes in vast detail what the bridge looks like.


"An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, by Ambrose Bierce; I Page 1." Page By Page Books. Read Classic Books Online, Free. Web. 19 Jan. 2011. .