The story is about a confederate soldier named Peyton Farquhar who is scheduled to be hung in Alabama during the civil war. In the story, it builds up to the moment when he is finally dropped and is hanging by his neck. He manages to get his hands free and the rope of his neck. He falls into the water and starts swimming as fast as he can towards the opposite shore. The union soldiers shoot at the man a few times but miss. He gets to the shore and starts running through the woods, he slows down when he feels he is far enough away. He knows he is close to his home so he persists until he needs rest. He feels himself blacking out but just as it all goes black, he flashes to his to house and sees his wife. He runs up to his wife but just as he is about to embrace her, something eerie happens. 

Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene--perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon--then all is darkness and silence!

Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.

Misdirection is the key to good story. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge really made me think the plot was going one way and then tricked me and completely changed it in the end. Reading An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge with the major plot twist really made for an eerie story. Throughout the story, I could somewhat tell that something was definitely off. There were a couple instances in the story in which things that would not have happened in a normal situation which allured to it not being real. Even though I had sensed something was off, the author nevertheless completely threw me off which I believe capped of the story perfectly. I started reading this short story because someone in class described it and I thought it sounded quite interesting. I read the story and loved it from the beginning, the constant action, the rising suspension, the creepy tension of knowing something is off and the overall fantastic writing style. The story contorted my mind by using different methods of saying something without actually saying it. The author did this by using little phrases or repeating things over and over again that would seem unimportant without the repetition. For instance, when the trained soldiers miss him from not very far away about ten times, I could tell that that was a little weird. This book challenged me to think by messing with my mind. It gave me, as the reader, hope and thought everything would turn out alright for the guy. In the end, however, things took a nasty turn for the worse and had an abrupt, yet gruesome and extremely surprising end. I just read this book because when someone described it, it sounded cool. Now I know that it is a complex piece of literature that, however short, still very good and very shocking.

Overall I really liked this story because it literally scared me with the ending. That is most likely the hardest thing for a piece of literature to do but this one pulled it off, I loved this reading and would recommend it to most.