Paper Summary:

This paper explains that in all three stories---"A Good Man is Hard to Find," by Flannery O'Connor, "The Curse," by Andre Dubus and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," by Ambrose Bierce---the authors' use of dramatic irony to force the reader's perspective into the minds of the protagonists, making the pain of what they experience surreally intense. The author believes that in these stories the irony can make us laugh, reveal truths that would otherwise be hard to express, or sharpen our focus on the absurdity of a situation. For example the paper explains that in "A Good Man is Hard to Find", the use of irony force's the reader's perspective to take in what the grandmother cannot the horror that is going to unfold, committed by men who gave no more thought to murdering children and old women than they would to catching a fish for dinner.

From the Paper:

""An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," by Ambrose Bierce, tells the story of a man being hanged from an intensely personal viewpoint. Peyton Fahrquahar, southern gentleman and planter, is about to be hung by Union soldiers after he attempted to burn a bridge and so prevent their advance. As the author dryly notes, "The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.." As with the protagonists in the other two stories, Fahrquahar has played a part in his situation by not being alert enough, soon enough: when a man in a confederate suit comes to his gate to get a drink of water, he doesn't realize he is a Union spy setting a trap for confederate collaborators."

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