Excerpt from student essay: The Absolute Truth in Life
	Many people think that it reliable to rely on what they see, feel, and do to be the absolute truth in their life. However, sometimes your mind can play tricks on you or shelter you from your own actions. This idea held true in both “A Hanging” by George Orwell, as well as “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” which was written by Ambrose Bierce. Ambrose Bierce was a soldier during the time of the American Civil War, where he fought and was eventually wounded in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain (Encyclopedia Britannica). His experiences during the war likely inspired him to write his story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” that tells of a man who is being hung by Federal scouts, and whose mind creates a false reality of escaping his fate as he falls to his death. George Orwell, on the other hand worked as a colonial police officer in Burma, which is the setting of his story “A Hanging” (Encyclopedia Britannica). This narrative is written from the point of view of a jail warder that comes to the realization that he will soon be taking the life away from a living, breathing person as he escorts a prisoner to the gallows. Both of these authors have taken their life experiences to write thrilling, thought-provoking stories that quickly engage their readers. Thus, each of these stories strongly use style and symbolism to truly affect their audience and explore the theme of absolute Truth.  
	Sadly, "A Hanging” by George Orwell the exposition of the plot starts off in a gloomy jail yard in Burma where a Hindu prisoner is taken out of his cell and sent on his long walk to inevitable death. The unresisting man is roughly tugged along the wet courtyard as the guards hold tightly to him. Before making it to the gallows, the group of men suddenly stop. This is the climax of the story, where a dog finds its way into the courtyard and begins sprinting toward them, barking and wagging. The reader feels this will affect the hanging, but it does not. Eventually, someone catches the dog and lures him away from the procession. As the prisoner clumsily walks to the gallows, the narrator carefully watches his movements and at one moment the prisoner adjusted his steps in order to avoid a puddle. This made the narrator realize that this prisoner is a living, breathing human whose life is going to be taken away in only a few moments. The group of men soon make it to the gallows, and the prisoner's neck is placed inside the rope with a bag over his head. In the resolution, while rhythmically crying out “ram,” the prisoner is hung and killed. The group of warders go on to drink, laugh and 'be merry, while the dead body of the prisoner still hangs from the gallows. Nevertheless, in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, the author, Ambrose Bierce, tells the story of a Peyton Farquhar, a planter from Alabama who is set to be hung by Federal officers due to his attempt to aid the confederate army. At the rising action of the plot, Farquhar is falling to his doom. The story then jumps forward to the climax as Peyton “fell straight downward through the bridge [and] lost consciousness” (Bierce). The author uses Farquhar's unlikely escape down the river and through the woods as the relieving, falling action He experiences unnatural sensory visions as he makes his way down the river, avoiding bullets, and then through the woods to escape. While walking through the woods he goes in and out of consciousness, but then suddenly appears at his house. In the resolution, his wife stands before him, filled with joy. As soon as they embrace, Peyton feels a pain in the back of his neck. All along, he could not get away and now, his dead body is swinging from the end of the noose.
	 	The use of style in both “A Hanging” and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is very different, yet effective. In Ambrose Pierce's piece, he uses multiple examples of figurative language in order give the reader a strong sense of what Peyton Farquhar was feeling throughout the story. As explained by Peter Stoicheff, Bierce uses “satire, irony, manipulation of the reader, the exposure of human self-deception, a surprise ending, and a stylistic compression of tautness” allowing the story to “elude its commentators, leaving a residual and uncanny sense of revelation hovering just beyond one's grasp.” At one point the author compares a pounding in Farquhar's ear as being “a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil” (Bierce). In another example, he explains that the pains in Farquhar's neck as he “swung..like a vast pendulum” felt “like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature” (Bierce).  As Farquhar is escaping down the river, he experiences senses that are “preternaturally keen and alert”Farquhar is suddenly capable of seeing the veins on distant leaves, individual insects in the trees, “prismatic colors” inside drops of water, and hear the sounds of water ripples upon his face. Ambrose Bierce's use of vivid description, figurative language, and the shocking ending plays a big role in involving the readers in a dreamy style and alternate sense of reality where they are allowed to “participate in the split between imagination and reason” (Stoicheff, Peter).  George Orwell's style of writing takes a different approach in conveying his story of “A Hanging.” According to the author of “George Orwell and the Art of Writing,”Orwell “advocated direct language and ambiguous expression, distrusting attempts to “dress up” facts and ideas to make more palatable” in order to give a clear, “plain” style of writing (Meyers, Jeffrey). In his story George Orwell uses little to no figurative language when telling the story of the demise of the Hindu prisoner. Orwell's primary goal of the story is to express the narrator's feelings when he sees the prisoner step aside to avoid a puddle, and he does so through direct language.

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