An Occurrence At Old Creek Bridge And William Faulkner s...

Short stories are rarely written in a non-linear structure. Ambrose Bierce’s â€Å"An Occurrence at Old Creek Bridge† and William Faulkner’s â€Å"A Rose for Emily† are good examples of non-linear structure. A non-linear narrative makes readers question why the author cannot present his story in a lucid form? Non-linear structure often makes stories harder to understand, but it keeps readers interested in the story. Bierce and Faulkner uses a similar strategy to present their stories by deceiving the readers to create suspense at the end of the story. Nick Melczarek explains narrative strategy in Faulkner’s â€Å"A Rose for Emily† with the help of a well-known critic and analyst Nebecker in his short article â€Å"Narrative Motivation in Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily.† Similarly, Lucy Bednar uses different voices used by Bierce to explain narrative strategy in â€Å"An Occurrence at Old Creek Bridge.† Narrative strategy no t only affects the reader’s perception of understanding the story, but also gives a deeper meaning to the story. Different author uses different narrative strategies to create deeper understanding in their stories. According to Melczarek, Faulkner uses more complicated narrative strategy to achieve psychologically complex effect of horror in his story, while Bierce uses hallucination in his story to create suspense. Bierce’s starts his story with a man who is about to be hanged to death without any description of that men. In the second section of the story Bierce describes a men