Mrs. Rachel Williams

Mrs. Rachel Williams 10th Grade CP English Understanding Time Periods Dates: 1 day

EATS Essential Questions: 1) How can you review each time period and track the characteristics of the time period throughout America from 1650-1800s?

Post – The Battle of Mr. Covey

Activating Strategy: ------Acceleration/Previewing (key vocabulary): Literary Device: theme Vocabulary: intimated, comply, interpose, solemnity, render, singular, attributed, curry, expiring, afforded Other Vocab: regionalism, naturalism, social commentary, regional diversity, cultural diversity Teaching Strategy: (collaborative pairs, distributed guided practice, distributed summarizing, graphic organizers) Graphic Organizer – Literary terms organizer, realistic/fantastic details organizer ------Distributed Guided Practice/Guided Summarizing: (prompts designed to initiate periodic practiceor summarizing) 1. Students will quickly review the time periods that we have discussed extensively in class. A list will be generated on the board and the class will put them in the order that they happened. 2. Students will get a graphic organizer asking for specifics of the time period as well as examples from literature discussed in that time period. 3. In groups of 3 or 4 students will work, time period by time period, to find elements of the time period and mark them on the organizer. 4. The class will discuss the time period and then students will break into groups again to cite examples of the literature we read that shows those characteristics. 5. Students will continue this process until we are caught up to the current time period we are discussing.

Summarizing Strategies: (learners summarize and answer essential questions) Ticket out the door: Pop Quiz – describe in your own words, using your graphic organizer, how America has changed throughtout the time periods. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge --- Plot Summary (ELL) By Michael J. Cummings...© 2007 ...... Standing on a plank on a railroad bridge in northern Alabama is a man with his hands bound behind his back. Around his neck is a noose. Twenty feet below him is the swift water of Owl Creek. Next to him are two Union soldiers, acting as executioners, with a sergeant directing the proceedings. Nearby is a captain. Sentinels stand watch at each end of the bridge. On one bank of the creek is a forest, and on the other bank is a line of trees serving as a stockade. Poking out of an opening is a cannon. A company of soldiers on the shore observes the scene on the bridge...... The man to be hanged is a civilian, about 35. He wears a frock coat and has a well-trimmed mustache and pointed beard. From all appearances, he is a gentleman, perhaps a plantation owner. As the moment of execution approaches, he closes his eyes to picture his wife and children. A sound–like a hammer striking an anvil–interrupts his thoughts. It is rhythmic, like a tolling bell, and grows louder and louder, hurting his ears. The noise is the ticking of his watch...... If he could somehow free his hands, he thinks, he could remove the noose, jump into the creek, swim to shore below the surface of the water, and escape into the woods...... The narrator reveals in Part II of the story that the condemned man is indeed a prosperous planter, with slaves working his land. His name is Peyton Farquhar, a strong supporter of Southern secession. Circumstances prevented him from fighting on the Confederate side, although he wanted to. However, he worked on behalf of the South in any way he could whenever an opportunity presented itself. One evening, a soldier in Confederate gray rides onto Farquhar’s plantation to get a drink of water. He told Farquhar that Union forces had advanced to the Owl Creek bridge, taken control of the railroad running over it, and issued an order to execute anyone who attempted to subvert Union activities at the bridge. Questioned by Farquhar about the vulnerability of the bridge, the soldier told him that a pile of dry driftwood at one end of the bridge “would burn like tow.” After Mrs. Farquhar brought him water, he drank it and rode off. He was a Union scout, not a Confederate soldier...... At the beginning of Part III, Farquhar is falling. He loses consciousness when the noose catches, then awakens moments later. Excruciating pain radiates from his neck throughout his body. There is a splash. Beneath the surface of the cold, dark water, he realizes that the rope has broken. However, the noose remains tight around his neck. After his body sinks to the bottom, it begins to rise. To be hanged and drowned is one thing, he thinks, but also to be shot is unfair. Pain in a wrist alerts him that his hands are working frantically to free themselves. They succeed, then remove the noose. Severe pain wracks his body. His hands keep working, bringing him to the surface, where he gulps air...... Farquhar is now keenly aware of his surroundings, as if infused with superhuman perception. The narrator says: He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf–saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the grey spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig...... When the soldiers begin to fire, Farquhar submerges, the rush of water sounding to him “like the voice of Niagara." When he resurfaces, he is much farther downstream. The soldiers fire again and again and Farquhar swims with the current. A cannon shot flies over his head, cracking and splintering trees in the forest ahead. A vortex catches and whirls him while carrying him forward. Moments later, he reaches the left side of the creek, the southern shore. Overjoyed, he throws handfuls of sand over himself as he smells the fragrance of the forest and hears the wind rustling the tree branches. After cannon grape shot hits the trees, he disappears into the forest...... Farquhar travels all day through the wilds, looking for a road but not finding one. At sunset, tired and hungry, he finally comes across a straight, wide, empty road with no houses in sight. Above him the stars shine down. From the woods on the left and right come strange noises, including a whisper in an unknown language. His neck is sore and swollen and bruised. He is now so thirsty that he sticks out his tongue to expose it to the cool air...... Sometime later, he comes to the gate of his home. It is morning. When he steps through the gate, his wife comes down from the veranda to meet him. After he opens his arms to greet her, he feels a tremendous blow on his neck. The narrator then says, “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.”

Characters

Peyton Farquhar: Southern plantation owner who is to be hanged by Union soldiers as punishment for his attempt (or suspected attempt) to destroy Owl Creek Bridge. Mrs. Farquhar: Farquhar's wife. Union Soldiers: They include executioners, sentinels, and overseeing officers on the bridge and a company of soldiers along the shore of Owl Creek. Union Scout: Soldier who wears Confederate gray when he rides onto Farquhar's plantation (in a flashback) and asks for a drink of water.

Additional Teacher Notes

Setting

The action takes place at a railroad bridge in northern Alabama during the U.S. Civil War, not long after the Battle of Corinth in northern Mississippi on October 3 and 4, 1862. The bridge runs north-south over Owl Creek. (See Grant's Reference, below.) On one side of the creek is thick forest. On the other is a company of Union soldiers. A cannon pokes from a line of trees the soldiers are using as a stockade. On the bridge are other Union soldiers preparing to execute a man with a rope around his neck. Time of Day

The story begins early in the morning, as disclosed by the boldfaced words in the following passage in Part I:

He [Peyton Farquhar] closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift–all had distracted him. The story ends in the evening of the same day.

Point of View

Bierce tells "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" in three parts. Part I is in objective third-person point of view except for the last three paragraphs. In objective third-person narration, the storyteller observes events but cannot enter the mind of any character and disclose his or her thoughts. In the last three paragraphs of the Part I, the narration shifts to omniscient (all- knowing) third-person point of view in relation to Peyton Farquhar. This shift enables Bierce to take the reader inside Farquhar's mind to demonstrate how emotional upheaval alters not only the way the mind interprets reality but also the way it perceives the passage of time. First, Farquhar mistakes the ticking of his watch for the tolling of a bell or the ring of an anvil struck by a hammer. Then, after Farquhar drops from the bridge at the moment of execution, he perceives a single second as lasting hours. In presenting his psychological study, Bierce could not have used first-person point of view. Here is why:

 Farquhar dies at the end of the story. Obviously, dead men can tell no tales.  If a Union soldier had told the tale in the first-person "I" and "me," he could not have entered Farquhar's mind. He could report only what he saw or heard.  If Farquhar had revealed his thoughts to a first-person narrator, the pace, suspense, and immediacy of the action would have been lost.

General Grant's Reference to Owl Creek

After the Battle of Shiloh (southern Tennessee, April 1862), General Ulysses S. Grant marched his Union forces south into Mississippi on his way to Vicksburg, a strategically important Mississippi River city. At Corinth–a northeastern Mississippi town just south of the Tennessee border and just east of the Alabama border–Grant and General William Starke Rosecrans repulsed a Confederate attack while solidifying control of the town, an important railroad center. In Chapter 26 of his memoirs of 1885 and 1886, Grant refers to Corinth and Owl Creek. (In his short story, Bierce also refers to the Battle of Corinth–and, of course, to Owl Creek.) Here is the passage written by Grant:

Preparations were at once made upon the arrival of the new commander for an advance on Corinth. Owl Creek, on our right, was bridged, and expeditions were sent to the north-west and west to ascertain if our position was being threatened from those quarters; the roads towards Corinth were corduroyed and new ones made; lateral roads were also constructed, so that in case of necessity troops marching by different routes could reinforce each other. All commanders were cautioned against bringing on an engagement and informed in so many words that it would be better to retreat than to fight. By the 30th of April all preparations were complete; the country west to the Mobile and Ohio railroad had been reconnoitred, as well as the road to Corinth as far as Monterey twelve miles from Pittsburg. Everywhere small bodies of the enemy had been encountered, but they were observers and not in force to fight battles. Whether the Mississippi Owl Creek is the same Owl Creek over which the railroad bridge passes in northern Alabama is uncertain. However, because Corinth is only a short distance from the Alabama border, it may well be that Owl Creek ran east from Mississippi into Alabama.

Type of Work and Years of Publication

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is a short story that observes the classical unities–that is, it takes place in a single location on a single day while focusing on a single subject. There are no subplots. Although the story is fiction, it is based on real events during the U.S. Civil War. The story first appeared in the San Francisco Examiner in 1890, then appeared in 1891 in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, a collection of Ambrose Bierce’s stories.

Foreshadowing The narrator of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” tells the reader that Peyton Farquhar escapes death after the rope around his neck snaps at the bottom of his fall from the bridge. Farquhar then swims to shore, under heavy gunfire, and makes his way home, by nightfall, through the wilds. However, the narrator reveals at the end of the story that Farquhar's escape is a dream that lasts only from the moment he drops from the bridge to the moment the rope breaks his neck at the end of his fall. To prepare the reader for the expansion of the single second it takes for Farquhar to die into a day-long event, author Bierce presents the following passage in which time begins to pass more slowly.

Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by–it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and–he knew not why– apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer, the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch. . . Themes

How Human Beings Deny Reality to Protect Themselves

On the personal and specific level, plantation owner Peyton Farquhar denies reality as a means of forestalling it. First, he lapses into a delusionary dream in which he escapes death after the weight of his body snaps the hangman's rope. Then he swims to safety under heavy gunfire and returns to his plantation. This dream lasts only a second, but Farquhar's mind turns it into an hours-long flight from the enemy–and reality. On the impersonal and general level, the slaveholding South– represented by Farquhar–refuses to accept the reality that slavery is a barbarous institution.

Bondage

Peyton Farquhar's livelihood depended on holding black men, women, and children in bondage. Ironically, Farquhar ends up in bondage, with a noose around his neck and cords around his wrists. Bondage is terrifying, Farquhar discovers, and all of the last thoughts of his life center on escaping it.

Allusions

Slavery

The following passages from "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" appear to allude to slavery.

1. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands (Part II, Paragraph 2). 2. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. (Part III, Paragraph 19). 3. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it (Part III, Paragraph 20).

The first passage says Mrs. Farquhar fetches water for a thirsty soldier in Confederate gray. Apparently, she thinks that serving the soldier herself, rather than calling upon a lowly slave to perform the task, manifests the depth of her support for the Confederate cause. She is unaware, of course, that the soldier is a Union scout in disguise. The second passage describes the scene on a road as Peyton Farquhar–in his end-of-life dream–nears his home. The passage is open to broad interpretation. It may suggest that the black trunks of the trees on both sides of the road represent the multitude of black slaves who stalwartly, though unwillingly, supported the Southern economy on its road to prosperity. The third passage appears to suggest that the circle of black represents slavery, the fatal injury to Peyton Farquhar's soul.

There are also direct references to slavery in the short story, such as the second sentence in Part II: "Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause."

Greek Mythology In Part III, Paragraph 16, the narrator alludes to Aeolus, the god of the winds in Greek mythology, saying, "A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of Æolian harps."

Imagery

Bierce's story relies heavily on imagery centering on sight and sound to vivify his tale. Following are examples of sound imagery. Figures of speech appear in colored type.

Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. (Simile)

The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. (Simile)

An appalling plash within two yards of him was followed by a loud, rushing sound, diminuendo, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps! (Onomatopoeia)

The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond. (Personification/Metaphor) (Onomatopoeia)

A whiz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. (Onomatopoeia) (Alliteration)

Farquhar's Dream Within a Dream

Peyton Farquhar experiences a dream within a dream, as noted in the first sentence of Paragraph 17: "A whiz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream." Up to this point in the story, Farquhar was already dreaming that he had escaped the Union forces. But after reaching the shore in his first dream, he lapses into another dream, a daydream, in which he becomes entranced with the beauty of nature and the joy of freedom. Is it possible to experience a dream within a dream? Edgar Allan Poe wrote a poem entitled "A Dream Within a Dream

A Dream Within A Dream By Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow- You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep- while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?

Study-Guide Reader Presents His Interpretation

...... Gregory Hazzard, a reader of this study guide, has offered the following additional observations about Farquhar’s end-of- life experience: ...... When Farquhar returns in his dream to a world he recognizes, it is from a perspective in which blacks welcome him home along the path to his sanctuary. This is the perspective from which Farquhar feels safe and comfortable. Since he doesn’t know the slaves on a human level, his mind relates to them as trees. The black tree “bodies” and black people are equal objects in his natural environment. The best his mind can offer in the dream is an outline of colored bodies...... This illusion is reinforced in that the welcoming he would ordinarily receive as a slaveholding plantation owner is a parallel of the welcoming he receives in his dream. That is, it is a dream life within a dream life. Because of the way things work in his society, his life as the owner of a plantation and slaves is better than that of other human beings. He ignores the concept that his slaves are not necessarily lined up lovingly and respectfully to welcome him to his sanctuary. He ignores that scouts in an underground system of freedom fighters stand ready to summarily convict him for his crimes against freedom.

Study Questions and Essay Topics

 Do you sympathize with Farquhar? Explain your answer.  Read a short biography of author Bierce. Then explain to what extent Bierce drew upon his own experiences when he wrote "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."  Did the Union forces have a right to hang Farquhar without first trying him in a court of law?  Write and essay that compares and contrasts "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" with Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell- Tale Heart." (Click here for the Poe study guide.) Point out the similarities and differences in the methods the authors use to tell their stories.  Write an essay that comments on the impact of the sight and sound imagery in the story. Click here for background information.  Bierce tells almost all of the story in the past tense. However, he writes Sentences 2 through 8 of the second-to-last paragraph of the story in the present tense. Why?  The last sentence of Part III, Paragraph 19, states: "The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which–once, twice, and again–he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue." Are these the voices of slaves, whose subhuman existence he could never understand because it was like a foreign language to him? Or do the voices represent someone, or something, else?  Bierce points out in his narration that the Owl Creek bridge runs from north to south (or from south to north). Since Peyton Farquhar, a slaveowner, is to be hanged from the bridge, does it thus symbolize the central issue dividing the North and the South?  Were there antislavery movements in the South? Were there proslavery movements in the North? Write an essay that informs the reader about both questions.