Comment on the shifts in the point of view in "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."

You are right to identify that Bierce uses narration in a
very interesting way in this famous story. For example, in section 3, the point of view
shifts to the third-person-limited point of view seconds before the actual death of
Peyton Farquhar. This of course is appropriate given the way that this section explores
Farquhar's desperate flight of imagination. Such a detached perspective allows the
narrator to maintain a realistic stance, even as Farquhar's mind is obviously running
away from reality.

You might like to think how the story
starts by being written in the omniscient point of view. In addition, the beginning of
the story is well known for the way that it presents the opening scene almost as a film
might present it:

readability="12">

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern
Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were
behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was
attached toa stout cross-timber above his ead, 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.

Note the very visual
nature of this description and how the scene is set, introducing the main character and
providing us with lots of detail. Of course, as the story progresses, as previously
noted, the point of view changes as we zoom in on Peyton Farquhar, and his feelings and
emotions, combining flashbacks that describe how he managed to arrive in this situation
with his own delusory flight of fancy before he dies.