1. This creates suspense because there
is a lot of unknown which makes the reader want to know why he is being hung. It allows the reader to imagine the best
and the worse outcome of his perdicimate, and make their thoughts a reality. The details that are given make the reader
suspect that he is not a common criminal but just a normal man, but we don't know why he is there.
2. Before he is getting hung he thinks about his wife and
children . Distorted perceptions are important becuase every thought he had before he thinks when he is getting hung
and bleieves that his thought s are actually happening.
3. The narrator perceived Farquhar as someone that is not
smart at all. Farquhar believes that war is all fun and games, but really it involves trickery and is a deadly battle without
mercy for the misinformed. Farquhar showed that he wasn’t very bright when he gave water to an enemy without being cautious
of whether he was on his side or the enemy’s.
4. Considering the outcome
of the story the ironic part of Farquars longing for the larger life of a soldier is that he tries to become a hero by burning
down the bridge so the union army could not get across but what ends up happening is that the union army has already traveled
across and he is too late. His main goal in the story is to become a hero, but he ends up dead because he has been betrayed
by a spy from the union army. The fact that Farquar agrees with the saying that “All is fair in love and war”
is ironic because this saying is true but he truly did not believe in it. A clear example of this is when he runs down to
the bridge and burns it down to stop the union army thinking that he has deceived them while in reality he has been deceived
by them. Since he lived by the saying he also died by it as well.
5. That after he fell
he came back to life, also that he said that the river was swift flowing but when he hit it he was able to swim out.
Also how his hands were trying to take off the noose with out him even doing it like a spectator watching a juggler.
Then when he was spinning in the vortex he was actually spinning at the bottom of the rope. When
he looked up at the stars and they were all shifting he was lousing conscious. Then when he skipped to
the house with his wife and kids was the final clue, and then he was dead.
6. His thoughts and sensations are unrealistic because during the
story he gives many hints that the things he is saying are not happening. In the beginning of part 3 in the story it says
that Farquhar drops under the bridge and passes out; left for dead. After, that happens he then begins to imagine all the
things he does think about but it proves that there not true because he has already passed out and not come too yet. Then,
he starts seeing stuff and noticing things that he would not be able to see, such as a soldiers grey eyes and the veins in
the leaves.
7. Limited 3rd Person point of view
was appropriate for the story because it allows the reader to assume that Farquhar did get free and it allows Bierce to show
his and only his last thoughts. If Bierce would have used an omniscient 3rd person point of view more towards the beginning
of the story, we would know that it was just some of his last thoughts and not everyone's while he was still hanging. This
would give away the ending when he dies.
8. The information from the flashback being told in the second part helps
create suspense for the reader during the first part, where Farquhar is being hung, and causes you to be curious of what is
happening to him. He creates a suspense during the first scene, and also adds an interesting twist into the description
of him, as you are trying to figure out what he did that made it so that he was going to be hung by the Northern Army.
The flashback is also used to split the parts where he is being hung, and is still in tact with reality, and the part where
he is in a dream where he breaks loose and gets away from the army and sees his family.
