Excerpt from "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" - Ambrose Pierce
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man
hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout
cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers
supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners-two private soldiers of the Federal
army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporar
platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood
with his rifle in the position known as "support," that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting o
the forearm thrown straight across the chest-a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It
did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely
blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it
Question 2: What does the tone of the description tell you about the narrator's perspective?
a. A sense of horror about what is about to happen
b. A cynical detachment
c. A sense of betrayal
d. Anger and bitterness