Job #3 - Literature Connections

I would connect the fake reality aspect of the book to a personal experience. A year and a half ago my sixteen year old cousin committed suicide and spent 3 days in the hospital in a coma on life support before finally passing away on Easter Sunday. During those 3 days my sister and mom went to  Kansas City to stay with my family and help however they could. They all spent a lot of time in the hospital sleeping there and waiting for news; my mom shared that during those few days whenever anyone woke up for the first few seconds of being awake they would be in your own reality (like Farquhar) forgetting they were in the hospital  (on the bridge), and forgetting what had happened (he was caught). Only after being fully awake would reality set in, even now we all still have our days of waking up and for those first few seconds forgetting what happened and being in our own happy reality. 

Job #2 - Thinking question

Why do you think Bierce chose this for a book? 

Of all the things he could have written about he chose to write about a man's fake reality right before he died. Not a very happy story to read about, not even one most people remember or think to hard about. 

The only reason I can think of for him doing this is because he was trying to say something through the story. If that's the case what do you think he was he trying to say with it? What did he hope people would take from it? What was his in goal in this book? And how did the ending make you feel? 

Job #1 Line Illuminator

"At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellation."  Chapter 3

I think that this helps point out that this is not really reality, but that it's all being made up by him. Because he can't seem to incorporate any people or animals besides the soldiers that he has just seen in reality. He can't make up buildings or anything like that to show any form of human life.  He also seems to be losing details in his new-reality, he went from seeing details about the forest, and the bridge in his escape to seeing the forest turning to walls, and seeing stars in front of him almost like seeing heaven. He is starting to loose sight of everything except that which he sees right in front of him. The road he found "seemed untraveled" he said almost like it was a road leading him somewhere different, somewhere like heaven, instead of to his home in which he thought he was going. 

What do you guys think? 

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