Narrative technique and naturalism in Bierce and Faulkner

Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and a Rose for Emily are quite similar in the style of writing. Essentially, Ambrose Bierce's an Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, is a naturalistic story, masterfully describing the death by hanging of Peyton Farquhar. The point-of-view alternates from the omniscient narrator to the free indirect speech of the main character. The story has a surprise ending, since the reader realizes that the apparent adventure for escape that Peyton has been through was actually a delirium of just a few minutes before he died. Thus, by suppressing conscious thought and reducing his character to the mere sensations and delirium before death, Bierce emphasizes the importance of the biological frame of man for his intellect. Thus, Bierce effectively shifts from the omniscient point-of-view to that of the free indirect speech, beguiling the reader into thinking that the adventure of Peyton really takes place, as described from the point-of-view of the narrator. In the end, the author comes back to his omniscience and the reader realizes the adventure was only a delirium caused by the sensations experienced by the dying body. Faulkner uses an unusual point-of-view: the first person plural, the point-of-view of the community in which Emily Grierson lived. Faulkner combines modernism with a few naturalistic elements in his story: Mrs. Emily's life is witnessed from the outside by the community, and the reader has no access to the story itself, but through the hearsay of the country folk. A Rose for Emily also has a surprise and grotesque ending: after Emily's death, the people find in one of the rooms of her house the body of Homer, Mrs. Emily' lover.