Ambrose Bierce was born in Meigs County, Ohio, in 1842 and died in 1914. He was an author of supernatural stories, which were seen in both weird tradition and in American letters at large. The stories in his two primary volumes often added a Western setting to a gothic fiction with psychological aspects. He was the tenth of thirteen children of Marcus and Laura Bierce. His first job, from 1868-72, was a journalist for the San Francisco Newsletter and California Advertiser. Over time Bierce became so respected and feared as a critic, that he could "make or break" an aspiring author. He went to school at Kentucky Military Institute and two years later served in the Union army of the Civil War. He saw action in several battles, including Chickamauga, one of the bloodiest of the war. It was in this war that he discovered death, destruction, and the physical and mental grief associated with it. After his marriage to a wealthy miner's daughter, Mollie Day, Bierce went to England, where he lived in London from 1872 to 1875, writing sketches for the magazines, Figaro and Fun. All of his experiences with the war had a lasting impact, and during this time, influenced his writings into short stories, such as "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". Ambrose Bierce is also famous for the circumstances surrounding the end of his life In 1913, after the breakup of his marriage and the death of his sons, he set out for Mexico to meet Pancho Villa and observe the Mexican Revolution at first hand and this was the end chapter of his own life because after that his fate still remains unknown.
The short story, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", can be divided into three parts. He introduces the situation in part one, and tells us what is happening in-between Farquhar's falling through the end of the rope and his actual death from hanging in part two. Both of those are in the present while part three is a flash back and tells the background information and how he arrived in such a predicament.
