Mason Labash
March 23, 2011
Journal: Ambrose Bierce
English 48B

“The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which – once, twice, and again – he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.”

"The strange "whispers" he had been hearing were, in the clinical perspective of asphyxiation, the gasps emanating from that same tongue. Farquhar is literally choking on his own tale."

Peyton Farquhar has been traveling for quite some time after floating downstream a good ways and continuing his escape on foot through the woods. At this point he is extremely exhausted and only “the thought of his wife and children urged him on.” His journey has taken him to this road that has not been traveled on for a long while. There is something very peculiar about the setting that he is hearing voices in. He's on a road that is “wide and straight as a city street.” My initial thought is that his escape route is a little too good to be true. He is meant to get home as quickly as possible I feel like because if he had dense shrubbery to hack through it would take too long. It would detract from the story because his escape is supposed to be obstacle free. I am not sure what the whispers are but there are three possibilities in my opinion. My first guess is that he is so dazed at this point that he's having auditory hallucinations. This can't be ruled out because exhaustion can have many different effects and I know that when one is sleep deprived, another form of exhaustion, they begin having all sorts of crazy hallucinations.

The voices could be the trees talking to him. I doubt trees would speak any language we understand. The trees are talking about him. They rarely see a human so when they do there is much to talk about. It's like Peyton is on a vision quest and he is to the point where he can actually hear the spirit of nature's voice. A more likely explanation for the whispers would be that they're the spirits of people that have traveled the road and lost their lives on their journey. The road is so easy to travel on that there's probably something evil lurking in the woods that kills whomever walks on it. The road may be a graveyard, which would explain why grass grows so lusciously on it. The evil spirits spare Peyton's life because he has already seemed to have escaped death just moments ago. Since he is dying he can now hear the voices of the dead. He can't understand them yet because he's not quite dead yet. We know that he's dying because he's having hallucinations and dreamy perceptions. The spirits see his badly swollen neck and the bruise from the rope. They know that he's unaware of his death and still in the process of realizing what's going on so they leave him alone. They can't interfere with his mental transition into the afterlife.They can only sit back and watch the confused soul progress towards his house. The unknown tongue they are speaking in may be the language of angels.

Loren P. Q. Baybrook on "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"" The Ambrose Bierce Project. Web. 24 Mar. 2011. <http://www.ambrosebierce.org/journal1baybrook.html>.