A Vision of Death
Uploaded by altermann on Dec 14, 2001
Since a long time ago, one topic that caught writer's attention is the death and all related to it. It influenced in a such way that developed into a complete and independent gender. The horror literature, that will influence the cinema. Unfourtanly that incredible and dark literature, in the last years, became in vulgar tales where as many people die as better the story, also movies were corrupted. We can find good examples of this decadence in movies like “The Night of the Living Deaths” or the magazines where death is exposed as a distraction for morbid minds hungry of disgusting photographs, and violent deaths. If we look for a book were death is considered as something mysterious and unpredictable (and no a blood pool) we must look at the old literature – fourtanly there are some writers in our days who talk about death in that way.
But what is death, dictionary defines it as “the end of life” or “termination of all organic functions” a very occidental definition of death. Nevertheless other cultures, specially primitives, consider death as a gate or event, that take your soul to carry it at other level of existence, it means leave the material world, and go to a spiritual one. That's why many people ask themselves what happens after death, the body die and that's all?, the soul leaves the body to continue existence in other place?, what happens in the mind of a dying man?.
Maybe Ambrose Bierce asked himself this questions before write “ An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, maybe he made this questions when he saw something at that place (he was there for a time). Probably Bierce get shocked by war and all the death he saw in the fields of battle. What ever Bierce writes about death in a very particular way, he doesn't talk about it explicitly, he does it through the relate in an implicit way.
Before continue with the analysis, it's necessary make a brief summary of the story, in order to understand about what we'll talk about. The story is as follows: in northern Alabama at the Owl Creek bridge there's a man about to be hanged, his name is Farquhar, in his last moments he looks down and thinks about his family. The atmosphere is so silent that he can hear the ticking of his watch, and now he thinks in escape. Next...