1. Warm-Up Summative Task Breakdown Realism – a closer look “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” Homework

2. Think about the last novel you read for pleasure. What elements of the text kept you hooked? Be specific!  EQ: ◦ How is cultural experience reflected in literature?  Objective: ◦ To gain an overview of the historical context and literary concerns of Realism

3. The Puritan Era Age of Reason Transcendentalism 1600 - 17501750-18001800-18401840-1855 American Literature Romanticism 1865-1915 Realism 1916-1946 Modernism 1946 – Present Contemporary and Post-Modern Period

4.  Population of the United States is growing rapidly.  Science, industry and transportation are expanding.  Literature also was growing, but most new writers were not Romantics or Transcendentalists. They are Realists.  The “Frontier” did not exist as before; its legacy changed and impacted Realists in its new form.  The aftermath of the Civil War meant that Americans were less certain and optimistic about the future.  The idealism of the Romantics and philosophy of Transcendentalists seemed out of date and irrelevant to many readers.

5. TThe purpose of the writing is “to instruct and entertain”  Character is more important than plot. SSubject matter is drawn from real life experience. TThe realists reject symbolism and romanticizing of subjects. SSettings are usually those familiar to the author. PPlots emphasized “the norm of daily experience”  Ordinary characters

6.  Uniformity and diversity  “The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads…and a story written by a measuring worm.” ~ Ambrose Bierce  Capturing the commonplace  For Twain and other authors, narrative voice is one of division – before and after war; conventions versus personal conviction  Writing in vernacular and local dialect  Local stories  Nature again ◦ Yes, its beauty, but also its hardship and how it wears the human spirit down

7.  God  Government  Education  Man’s Purpose in Life  American Dream  Evidence of Influence

8. Ambrose Bierce

9.  1870s-80s: journalist and writer in San Francisco (later with Hearst publications) ◦ 1872-75: magazine writer in London  Wrote stories about the War and about California: unsentimental & disillusioned; he read Stoic philosophy  Married wealthy miner’s daughter in 1871; divorced in 1905  The Devil’s Dictionary (1911) is his often- quoted book of cynical definitions: Happiness: “an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.”

10.  1900-1913: mainly in Washington as political lobbyist for Hearst and journalist  Sept. 10, 1913, age 71: "I am going away to South America, and have not the faintest notion when I shall return.”  He posted a letter from Mexico, then vanished; possibly killed in Mexican Civil War

13.  Section I: Present; Realism: Military Ritual of Hanging; hint of subjectivity/fantasy  Section II: Flashback; Realism/Satire: Framing of Peyton Farquhar by Union spy  Section III: Present  Future; Fantasy; ends realistically in present

14.  Section 1; ¶1-2: Bierce establishes texture of reality through close description of execution scene: bodily positions, military rank, physical equipment, etc.  ¶2, end: the formality of the scene associated with Death  ¶3: description of protagonist appeals to historical reality and reader’s sympathy: “kindly expression”

15.  Section II; ¶8-17: Southern gentry portrayed through Bierce’s Northern satiric perspective: ◦ “Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician, he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause” (¶8) ◦ “the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war” (¶8) ◦ “Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands” (¶9) ◦ Ultimate irony: Soldier was a Union spy

16.  Section 1; ¶4, end: subjectivity enters narrative: ◦ Narrator’s detached intellect:  “simple and effective”  “‘unsteadfast footing’”: quote from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I ◦ Time appears to slow down:  “stream racing madly”  “sluggish stream”  Slowing of his watch, increase in volume

17.  Finish reading the text.  Questions 1 – 10  Create a graphic organizer from the Realism notes and locate 3 quotes from the text to support each Realism element present in the text. ◦ 3 quotes for each element ◦ Be sure to list the page number and paragraph number for each quote

18.  Section I; ¶6: “Flash” of thought expressed as words: “If I could free my hands....”  Section III; ¶18: loss of consciousness; reawakening “ages later, it seemed”; pain of hanging, “unaccompanied by thought”  Thought restored: impression that rope has broken and he is in stream  ¶19: Detached from himself: “watched” his hands free themselves and remove noose; he surfaces

19.  ¶20: Senses “preternaturally keen and alert”; observes natural world ◦ Ripples of stream ◦ Leaves of trees, insects ◦ Dewdrops on blades of grass ◦ Gnats, dragon flies, water spiders, fish

20.  ¶21: Sees his executioners: “their forms gigantic”  ¶22: One of sentinels fires rifle; Farquhar sees his “gray eye” looking into the rifle sights: an impossible perception ◦ Note: Farquhar’s own eye is gray (¶3)  ¶25: Bullets fired; one lodges in his neck and “he snatched it out” (unrealistic detail)  ¶30: cannon fired

21.  ¶31: whirling: “Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color”; similar to painterly expressionism, ◦ The Scream (1893; same decade as Bierce’s story) by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944); see next slide

23.  Details suggest artificial, dreamlike setting: ◦ ¶31: Sand like “diamonds, rubies, emeralds; trees “giant garden plants; he noted a definite order to their arrangement” ◦ ¶33: “forest seemed interminable”; “He had not known that he lived in so wild a region”: uncanny ◦ ¶34: Nightfall: road “wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwellings anywhere.”

24.  Some details hint at menace, threat: ◦ ¶34: “black bodies of trees formed a straight wall on both sides” ◦ “strange constellations”: “secret and malign significance” ◦ “whispers in an unknown tongue”

25.  ¶35: Hints that Farquhar is still in the noose: ◦ Neck pain ◦ Eyes congested, unable to close ◦ Tongue swollen, thrust out ◦ Feet suspended above ground

26.  ¶36: Morning: approaches home  Wife standing to meet him: “fresh and cool and sweet,” “smile of ineffable joy”  Farquhar “springs forwards with extended arms”; “stunning blow to back of neck”; “blinding white light”; “darkness and silence”  ¶37: “Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.”