The short story, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce, has many profound implications for the reader. During the main character's hallucination before he is hung, he, as well as the reader, receive a confirmation of the beauty and value of life and a balance to the emotional and disturbed nature of the "real" time of the story, which presents the world, that of the civil war south, as unpleasant and full of manipulation.
             We notice immediately the strange amount of natural description, once Peyton is free from the noose and floating down stream, while being shot at by military men. Instead of panic the recent escapee "saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf-the very insects upon them, the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig"(p117). He was noticing the beauty of life around him. Things that he had never stopped to take notice of before were all of a sudden a vital experience, of immediate importance to him. Before the moment that he supposedly escaped death's throes, he had never seen such beauty or such loveliness, or perhaps, more accurately, he has never truly appreciated them.
             Peyton also at this time became very pointedly focused on the people closest to him, a no longer on the war and the affairs of the greater world. While in the water Peyton's goal was to get away from the military men, that are now shooting at him, to get to his beloved wife and children. "By diving I could evade the bullets, and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods, and get away home"(p115). This is what keeps him going once he reaches the forest and is making his way to his home. "By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing. The thought of his wife and children urged him on"(p119). His devotion is now to them and not the same as it was at the beginning of the story when he was conned into blowing
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