Sample Analysis
You cannot analyze a story the first time you read it, and you should not try. The first time you read a story, read for enjoyment. Let the author lead you. Simply be aware of any thoughts crossing your mind.
I am going to use the story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce. The story takes place during the Civil War, but was written twenty years later. That delay has a definite effect on the author’s thinking and message. Bierce wrote the “Devil’s Dictionary.” It was a reflection of Bierce’s very satirical look at the world. It is also a key to beginning to understand Bierce’s thinking patterns. Bierce’s definition of War is
What I am giving you is an illustration of the way you BEGIN to analyze a short story. I will not give you a completed paper, instead I will give you “thought snippets,” and research elements needed to analyze stories. If you have not read “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce read it before you look at this example. Imagine how easy it will be to write the analysis once you have accumulated the “snippets.”
Basic background--author--Bierce (1842-1914?) was raised in Ohio and had one year of formal education at Kentucky Military Institute. Bierce said that he went to the Civil War with ideas of glory, honor, and a speedy end to the war. He found death, pain, suffering, confused sets of rights and wrongs, and no glory or honor. Bierce would have been 22 when the Civil War started--thus he was probably one of the “older” soldiers. Ironically, he enlisted as a drummer boy in the Ninth Indiana Infantry. He was soon raised to a position of lieutenant and map maker. He was wounded in late 1864 or early 1865. He left the military, moved to California, and became a journalist and writer.
Basic background--time frame of story-- Owl Creek was written in the late 1880’s and published in 1891. Psychology was experiencing a renaissance of a sort. Instead of a product of “humors.” Human psychology was becoming seen as the result of motivation and volition. Thus, if someone wants something he/she will find a way---so the trick being taught by psychologists was to create a desire in the person. Information taken from Outlines of Psychology (1882; English 1891) by Harald Hoffding, Robert H Wozniak (Editor) {Save for bibliography notes} (A pioneering account of psychology approached from a dynamic point of view. Conceiving of 'will' in the widest sense to include phenomena of motivation as well as volition, Hoffding argued that cognition served as a guide to and feeling a symptom of the more fundamental motivational and volitional phenomena.) As I read his definition--if the brain can think it and the senses want it--you have cognition, motivation, and volition. Action, physicial or mental, is sure to follow.
Science and inventions were rampant. Some of the hidden international alliances that would play a major portion of WWI were being formed. The world was an unsettled place. Ideas taken for granted for hundreds of years were beginning to be questioned.
Bierce would be 49 or 50 when this story was published. Therefore, he is doing some thinking back on the war, looking at the wars occuring all over the world, and adding in the underlying meaning of the 1890’s psychology. If all acts a person commits are only a reflection of what he/she wants to do than how does that play out in a war?
Simplified plot-- Part I Peyton Farquhar is put on the bridge and made ready for a 6AM hanging. The third person narrator looks at the formal military line up and organization, and concludes there is nothing personal in this hanging just a military matter.
Part II The narrator takes us back a couple days to when a Federal scout disguised as a Southern soldier stopped at Farquahar’s house and fed him false material about how easy it would be to burn the bridge over Owl Creek. Farquahar wanted to be a portion of the war in some way (his psychological hook) and he took the bait. He is caught and sentenced to hang. At 6 AM PF begins to fall.
Part III We are told the rope breaks and PF begins a long difficult swim home. We are given a great many details. The rope comes off his hands, the bullets flatten as they hit the water, PF dives beneath the surface coming up only for air. He sees the trees in great detail, the sand looks like jewels, and his wife is beautiful. In the last two or three paragraphs we are told that his neck hurts where the rope burned him. Finally, in the last sentence, we are told he is dead hanging below the bridge over Owl Creek.
GUT READING -- I bit. I believed in the escape. I was surprised at the body hanging from the bridge.
How did it happen? My psychological hook was my desire for PF to escape. I really do not want to see anyone hung. The fact that he was a Southerner and slave owner did not play into my thinking---maybe because the CW has been over for more than 100 years--maybe because Birece did not play up the slavery issue. If he had described PF as beating his slaves, I might have felt differently. Birece kept the slavery issue to one or two lines.
I ignored every clue Bierce gave and all of the physics I have learned in order to believe in the escape. In part one we are told it is a creek, yet in the escape it takes on the depth and speed of a river. Rope swells and tightens when it is wet, yet I accepted the fact that it came off his wrists. Etc Etc.
a) characterization---actually all of the characters except PF are outlined rather than described. Even PF is only shown as relatively young, gullible, desirous of adventure, and with a strong imagination. The most import character is the “escape.” Everyone reads through that escape adventure without definite reference to its possibilty.
b) plot---by not following the traditional time order Birece can build sympathy before he has to make PF a human with faults. The only thing close to a traditional plot is the escape. It looks like a plot, acts like a plot, but isn’t the real plot. The real plot is how PF is able to deal with his hanging by total denial.
c) time sequencing---The actual event the story is discussing (the hanging and imagined escape) takes place in less than 5 minutes. The one extended time frame is the scout’s visit to PF’s home. The reverse time order helps keep the tension and the momentum.
d) use of sections in stories---The author used three numbered sections to separate the who from the why and the what.
e) setting--- In actuality the setting is the bridge, in PF’s (and the reader’s) imagination the setting is the river.
f) style---The author moves between third person omniscient, to limited omniscience, to having PF do the talking through the escape, returning to third person omniscient.
g) tone and irony---Bierce uses quite a bit of irony and some bitterness in discussing the military’s attitude toward hanging people. He vascillates between factual, and asking you to judge everyone by giving you their actions, their apparent emotions, and the end results. The scout is shown as a clever calculating spy, the people doing the hanging are shown as cold or detached, PF is shown as a person desperate to be of service to his side of the war. He is the only “romantic” in the group, but he also gullible and a touch vain.
h) theme---Once I recognized the real plot, I had to rethink the theme. He has the theme of human hope running eternally even in totally hopeless situation. He also has the theme that humans can deceive themselves into believing anything. PF deceived himself into believing he could burn down the bridge without asking why the military didn’t burn the bridge. PF makes his death as painless as possible by using his mind to put himself somewhere else. Bierce also has the theme of human implacabilty--the scout set PF up and the military hangs him--but PF never loses hope. What I am not clear about, and can make a case for either side, is the question of Bierce’s attitude. Is he mocking psychology’s 1890’s stand, or seeing the strength of the human mind as explained by psychology.
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I found the chart below on the cited website. I think it gives a clear idea of how simple it can be to determine basic writing style. You can go a great deal further with the analysis of someone’s writing style, but this is a solid start.