Owl Creek

Action packed, excitement, and surprising, these words came to mind after I read “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce. This story gives you a lot of images, it’s almost like a movie is playing in your head, and there was a part in the story when he describes how the noose felt on his neck. He described the pain so well, I believe he used similes to describe how the noose felt. You won’t stop wanting to read it, this story is a little different too, it was broken into 3 parts, the first part describes the situation, the second part introduces the person who is about to get hung, it gives a brief story of how he got into that situation, and finally the third part, where you think he escapes, but it was all in his imagination, he imaged him escaping as he was falling through the bridge and the noose breaking his neck. The story's point of view is difficult to say, it keeps changing throughout the story and it makes the story even better, the story has a weird transition, there are some parts where you think the author is describing the situation, but really it’s the guy in the story’s view. To summarize it up, if you like shocking twisting endings, that deal with the civil war, this story is for you.

Bartleby's Facebook

If you were to see Bartleby’s Facebook it would contain nothing really great. It is plain and simple, the only application he has is an application called “brick wall”, I don’t really think that application exist, but it’s Facebook anything can be created there. He has no wall post, and has one friend, and it’s not really a person, it’s the New York law firm he worked in. He left a wall post and it reads “I prefer not to”, he has a few pictures on his profile, and they consist of, brick walls, doors and screens. His profile picture is of an invisible figure behind a white background. Also his status is set as “I prefer not to do anything”, he never usually logs on, he logs on whenever he feels like it, but for the past month he hasn’t. Not sure why, he might be tired of doing the same routine of logging in and out.
I chose to give these features to Bartleby’s Facebook because his mysterious and interesting ways. Every time there was a confrontation between Bartleby and his boss it would never escalade to the “anger” level, he would end up saying “I prefer not to”. A usual person would argue back and take it to the extreme with their boss; however Bartleby is not like that, he is mysterious person. As I was getting to the end of the story I began to see Bartleby not as a person, but as a symbol. The thing that made Bartleby interesting was him challenging his boss’s power, whenever he was told to do something he would reply “I prefer not to” and the boss would let him get by. If the boss was to assert his power I think Bartleby would have listened but yet again Bartleby is a mysterious figure.

Photo Credit: http://elyacare.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/tapa-bartleby.jpg