#4: Point of View Usage in "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"

In this story, a man is being hanged and dreams of escaping the hanging to return to his wife; however, it is discovered at the end that this delusion of grandeur is nothing more than that and he dies. The choice to use 3rd person limited as a point of view is worth considering, as its possible to tell the same story with that point of view, so we need to examine what 3rd person limited can accomplice that first person cannot.

First of all is the distance between the main character and the reader. In 3rd person, the reader is like a spirit, watching over the events of the story while unable to interfere. In first person, the reader is the main character, and as such the actions of the main character become more personal. This metaphorical distance can completely change the moral of the story. In 3rd person, the events of this story serve as a warning, a "what if" scenario used to demonstrate a point. In 1st person, the events of this story becomes punishing, more personal. It punishes the reader for believing that Pyton Farquhar could avoid the inevitable by making his eventual death more personal, the reader would be in Farquhar's shoes and believe the same things he does, as we have no other characters to believe in.

So the biggest difference this point of view would make for this story is the effect on the reader, in 3rd person the metaphorical distance between the reader and the protagonist makes the story serve as a warning, as compared to a hypothetical first person version of this story where the reader would be metaphorically executed along with Farquhar for believing in his delusion of grandeur.