Ambrose Bierce’s use of stream of consciousness explores the psychological effects of dying. Instead of focusing on the hanging, he pushes the reader to explore how the mind copes with the death of the body. He places his protagonist, Peyton Farquhar, in a liminal space: The Owl Creek Bridge. Farquhar thinks, “If I could free my hands […] I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home” (8). He came to the bridge to become a hero for the Southern cause, and now he is about to lose it all.

The narrator says Farquhar originally believed that “no service was too humble for him to perform in the aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier” (9). As he awaits his fate, however, he wishes to return home to his family and friends. Scholars Sharon Talley and Peter Stoicheff take a Freudian view of the story.