Occurance at Owl Creek (by 2/12)

Prompt 1:
The 5th paragraph in the first part that stats out as " He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children." This is important because the man it about to face death and the last thing he wants to remember are the ones he loves deeply. As he is trying to think about his family he starts to focus on something else, time. The time being spent as he awaits his death connected to the noose. He can hear the ticking of his watch. The author wrote this scene to show us what it must feel like to be in his position. The man is fighting for a cause and as he is near death, what is more important that the cause, slavery, is his family. Maybe Bierce is telling us that instead of fighting for something like slavery he should have been fighting for the protection of his family. How swiftly death comes to some. This is important to the story because it shows that many men alike Peyton, were killed for their part in the war, by being a soldier, or a sympathizer. The sad part is that he is an American and the Civil War sadly killed many Americans.

Prompt 2:
After reviewing the story I think it will be about a man who goes through death and how his last moments are thought of and what it is like to die as a man in his position. The story is about a man named Peyton. He is a Confederate man and is approached by a Union soldier who tells him that is he demolishes a certain bridge it will slow down the advances of the Union. As he is doing so he is caught in the act and is subject to a hanging. In the story is makes it seem as if Peyton gets away. It mentions the noose breaking and him falling into the stream, going with the water to later emerge and escape into the forest. After traveling all day and all night and enduring pain from the tightening of the noose and traveling through the wood in cold water drenched clothes, he makes it to his family's plantation. As he is about to embrace his wife, his neck snaps and he dies. We assume that he actually made it home, but in the end he was on the noose the whole time, and endure a death by hanging. The Northerner gave Peyton the idea to go to Owl Creek Bridge and burn it down, saying that it would go down like timber. Although he warned Peyton that any civilian interference meant death, he still went along an did it. The man was a Federal Scout. Peyton was a Confederate supporter and wanted to do anything to help the cause, and the Federal Scout wanted to lure him into a trap knowing that he would be hanged. The relationship between the Northerners and the Southerners is privative. If Peyton just stayed by his family, instead of putting all of his extra energy into helping the South, he would not have been tricked and killed that day.