"A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama..."See in text(I)
The narrator begins the story dispassionately and objectively, as if observing the scene from a distance and not knowing the man. He gradually moves into the condemned man's point of view with the sentence, "The arrangement commended itself to his judgement as simple and effective." But the narrator does not reveal the man's name until the beginning of the story's second section.
"He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children..."See in text(I)
In this paragraph and the next one, the narrator describes the thoughts going through the condemned man's mind. It is at this point that the narrator begins to move more into the condemned man’s point of view. This marks a shift away from the cold and detached tone of the narrative thus far.
"Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge..."See in text(III)
This ending--horrible and surprising--is characteristic of Ambrose Bierce's short stories, particularly his Civil War stories, which all end with an ironic twist that often surprises the reader because of the matter-of-fact tone Bierce uses to describe a horrific scene.
