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An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

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An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

1.
The story begins with an exposition in an authorial narrative situation. An authorial narrator can be identified by special characteristics.
The authorial narrator is situated outside the world of the characters and hovers over the events of the story as an invisible omniscient observer. He can make interjections and comments on the events. Such interjections and comments can be found in the text.
An example for an interjection can be found in the following sentence at the end of Part I - ‘As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed […]’ - or at the beginning of Part II - ‘Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from […]’
The last sentence of the second paragraph of Part I is a comment of the authorial narrator. ‘Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect […]’
Another characteristic of an authorial narrator is territorial and temporal omnipresence. The narrator can be present in all places were characters are alone and he can jump in time.
An example for the territorial omnipresence is when the gray-clad soldier who visited the protagonist Peyton Farquhar at his house repasses the Farquhar´s house one hour after he rode away. In this situation the soldier is alone.
This event happens in a flashback in Part II which is an indicator for the temporal omnipresence of the authorial narrator because he jumps in time.
In my opinion the authorial narrator recedes during the story into the background and in Part III is replaced by a figural narrative situation. Now the narrated world is presented from Peyton Farquhar’s point of view. Narrative transmission is almost invisible in this part. Farquhar functions now as the centre of orientation. The reader gets a clear insight into

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